January 2008: Be it Resolved

As I write this, we are already twenty days into the New Year. There is an internet consensus that about half of Americans make resolutions. One website, last updated in 2005, claimed this is down from 88%.

I expected to find some good statistics. But they were not to be found. What are the most popular resolutions? What percentage of people stick to their resolutions and for how long? How many make it through a week? Two week? A month? These statistics vary.

The consensus of the sites I looked at confirmed the following. The most popular resolutions are, as you might suspect, quitting smoking, losing weight, getting fit, getting control of one’s finances, spending more time with ones family/loved ones, and reducing stress. The big three are definitely smoking, weight and fitness.

I did find out that FranklinCovey, a company specializing in planning and organization tools and methods, has just completed their third annual New Year’s resolution survey. Their top ten resolutions according to this survey for this year were:

1. Get out of debt or save money
2. Lose weight
3. Develop a healthy habit (e.g., exercise or healthy eating)
4. Get organized
5. Develop a new skill or talent
6. Spend more time with family and friends
7. Other
8. Work less, play more
9. Break an unhealthy habit (e.g., smoking, alcohol, overeating)
10. Change employment
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071218/20071218005203.html?.v=1

Regarding how long people stuck with their resolutions, the information was a little fuzzy. Some websites claimed that 25% of people had abandoned their resolutions after one week. The number that abandoned their resolutions after two weeks jumped to almost 40%.

The FranklinCovey survey found that 35% of their respondents give up on their resolutions by the end of January. Eventually, 77% abandon the resolutions. The reasons given for abandonment are too many other things to do (40%) or never fully being committed to them (33%).

FranklinCovey customers buy and presumably use organizers. They tend to make to-do lists and try to execute them. We could arguably say that they are more organized then the general population. To me, the statistic that 77% of FranklinCovey customers abandon their resolutions is daunting.

There was one website that was advocating an alternative, more new age or spiritual set of resolutions:

1. Accept your own mortality
2. Remember that not everyone worships the same god, and respect that.
3. Remember that the world seemed simpler because you knew less about it.
4. Cultivate a garden
5. Wear comfortable clothing
6. Spend time thinking
7. Insist on formality
8. Eat something strange
9. Remove your shoes
10. Have a day in bed
www.associatedcontent.com/article/101216/10_best_new_years_resolutions.html

I don’t necessarily advocate this list, but I think it is a worthwhile exercise to review the list and think how you might revise them to fit your own life. A “be nicer to everyone” resolution has a certain intrigue. It may be easier to quit smoking or lose weight than to “be nicer to everyone.”

One thing is probably certain. Setting goals, setting resolutions, does indicate that one has a desire to change something or to improve oneself. If goals are not set, there is little likelihood there will be much change or improvement. There is an old quality management adage that if you do not establish measures, you will not know what to improve. If you then do not keep track of the measures over time you will never know if you have improved or if anything you have implemented actually had any impact.

So, establishing a resolution indicates that you have thought about changing or improving something. It means you have thought about you life and aspirations. You have thought about change and betterment.

Wanting to change, wanting to improve is the first step. It is like another old adage, this one about addictions. Admitting one has a problem is the first step towards overcoming the problem and changing for the better. This, like setting a resolution, is first step toward changing and improving.

Unfortunately, this first step is the easiest. No matter what the motivation, desire, or fear of continuing on the current path, setting the objective, writing the resolution is simple to do. It requires a little brainpower, interest in changing, and some language skills. For example:

I resolve to:

· Lose 25 pounds
· Drive the speed limit
· Stick to my New Year’s Resolutions this year
· Be nicer to others
· Watch less TV
· Avoid idle gossip
· Never kill another insect even the creepiest scariest one that has no business
being in my house.
· Return all business e-mails the same day and all personal e-mails by the
next day
· Write a monthly e-letter to friends and family
· Learn to play a well tempered clavier
· Call my parents every day
· Complete my to-do list everyday.
· Become self-actualized
· Dis-associate myself with anyone who uses the term “self-actualized”

Feeble attempts at humor aside, there are guidelines for setting resolutions. One method is to use the SMART principle to set resolutions. SMART is a set of principles to set resolutions or objectives properly. These guidelines are very popular in business. SMART is an acronym for:

Specific: Vague goals are hard to achieve. Be specific in what you want to do. “I resolve to be better” is not real helpful. “I resolve to be a better leader” is better but could still be improved upon.

Measurable: How will you know if you achieve your goal without a measure. “I resolve to lose 25 pounds and keep it off” is measurable. You know when you hit the first part of the goal, and you can continue monitoring it.

Achievable: “I resolve to run the 100 meter dash in the Olympic Games” while being Specific and Measurable is unachievable for someone this side of fifty. “I resolve to run the 100 meter dash in an AARP Olympics” is specific, measurable, and achievable… though it just doesn’t sound as
thrilling.

Revisable: Maybe losing 25 pounds by the end of the year is too much. Maybe after six months, it may make sense to lose 15 pounds and then 10 more the next year. There is nothing wrong with this. You would still be making progress.

Timely: There must be a horizon over which you want to achieve the goal. The beauty of New Year’s resolutions is that the time period is, by default, a year.

A resolution, thus, is nothing more than an objective or goal. Normally, we only use the word resolution for objective and goals we make at the beginning of the year. If we decide to quit smoking on August 12th, it would not be called a resolution. We would just say “I quit smoking today” or “I decided to quit smoking.”

But resolution is a good word. We resolve to do this or that. It sounds so much stronger than simply deciding to do something. We decide to watch a football game. We decide to have steak and decide to have it prepared medium rare. We decide to buy the Honda Civic instead of the Ferrari we really want.

But, when we resolve, it implies that we have really mulled the decision over and given it great consideration. Resolutions have more of a ring of commitment than mere decisions. No one resolves to buy a Honda Civic, but people do resolve to consume less energy and “that is why I decided to buy the Honda Civic that gets 35 miles per gallon.” No one resolves to have a decaf coffee, but people resolve to cut caffeine out of their diet and that is why “I am ordering the decaf latte.”

Setting the resolution is easy, living the resolution is the challenge. Most of the resolutions we set require habitual change. It is not something easily done but requires dedication and constancy of purpose (yes, like Dr. Deming’s famous 1st point). We are talking about quitting smoking, losing weight, getting fit, improving one’s blood chemistry, or as I have kind of sort of quasi-resolved this year, getting organized. These kinds of resolutions require changing ones behaviors that have been deeply set over a period of years.

Mark Twain said, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times." This is a great quote and is cited all over the internet. In his humorous way, Mark Twain captured the essence and difficulty in these kinds of behavior modifications. It requires constant vigilance and effort. It involves avoiding temptation that often results in backsliding and maybe even abandoning the resolution.

There is plenty of advice for sticking to ones objectives. Most are in news articles that were prevalent the first few weeks of the New Year. The advice is varied and not every bit appeals to everyone. One should pick and choose what will work best for them. The lists overlap a quite a bit. I will use the list of Dr. Judith Orloff, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and author of the book, Positive Energy as found on www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/29/earlyshow/health/main663635.shtml (her points, my words).

Keep a positive attitude: This is key. As soon as you start looking at this as a burden or a chore, you will suffer and struggle. The path of least resistance is to give up. There will be tough spots. A positive attitude will carry you

Avoid energy vampires: People you routinely interface with often tend to enable and are used to the behavior you are trying to change. They may try to lure you back to those habits, contrary to your resolution, because they enjoy the old you they are used to. They may simply be jealous of your efforts to change and want to see you fail. Rather than avoid people you might really like, I would say the goal is to manage energy vampires.

Practice self-compassion: A slip up, a back-slide, does not have cause collapse and giving-up on the resolution. Cut yourself a break for an occasional slip-up and resume your quest. This particular bit of advice for me is a slippery slope. This compassion thing sounded so good, I tried it one during one of my weight loss attempts. I got so good at being compassionate with myself, the frequency of slip-ups became hardly occasional and I actually gained weight.

Set realistic goals: We covered this in the SMART objective discussion above.

Don’t compare yourself to others: The resolution is about you. It is about your improvement and betterment. It is doing your personal best. I could use Lance Armstrong as a cycling inspiration but comparing myself to him… that could easily dampen my positive attitude.

Celebrate your successes: Set interim shorter term goals, maybe weekly, maybe monthly. If you achieve them, then celebrate… a little. The celebration should not be a slip-up requiring you to invoke self-compassion.

Then, of course, there is Mark Twain method. If you fail, keep trying. Never give up, eventually you will make it.

What is my resolution for this year? As mentioned earlier, it is to be more organized. I am not good at organizing things either in files or in my laptop, though I am better on the laptop. In the physical world, I tend to keep things in desktop piles. I should organize and desktop file papers requiring action. One acted on, the papers should be filed in an appropriate hanging file. After a year, tax related documents should be saved in that year’s tax file and the rest discarded.

Furthermore, I want to organize my calendar and to-do lists so that I do not miss meetings or deadlines. I want to prioritize that which must be done more effectively.

I know what to do, I just don’t do it. Being organized is one of those things I have to a little bit everyday. Why are these kinds of things so hard? For me, this is a clear case of “Knowing Never equals Doing.”

How am I doing so far? Ehhhh… I am at risk of being part of that 77% in the FranklinCovey survey. But I am not giving up. I am keeping a positive attitude and I am practicing a lot of self-compassion.

Some Random Quotes:

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden

What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.
- Abraham Maslow

Goals are dreams with deadlines
- Diana Scharf Hunt, a time-management expert I never heard of but seems best known for this quote.

December 2007: TV Land

The Old Days: I am thinking about television and the evolution thereof. As I was growing up, I was taught that Edison invented the light bulb and the phonograph, Henry Ford invented the car, and the Wright brothers invented the airplane. I thought the television to be every bit as significant and magnificent but when I asked no one could tell me who invented it. How odd. But it was my first exposure to corporate product development. RCA had a large role in the late stage development and commercialization. http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television_Time.htm (I later came to learn that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile but actually the assembly line that made autos economically and quickly.)

I remember not having a TV set in the house. I remember when my father brought one home. I believe I was in kindergarten. It was a monstrosity of a box with an incredibly small screen. It was more like an oscilloscope than a TV. It was the size of a large orange crate with like a ten inch screen.

That TV and even the one that replaced it a few years later needed constant attention. It was before the days of transistors and “solid state” electronics as they used to call it. The TVs were full of vacuum tubes that were always burning out. My dad would open the back of the set and pulled the tubes that looked suspect, had black spots on them. We would go to the local drug or hardware stores. They both had tube testers in which you would plug in the suspect tubes and hit a test button; the machine would tell you if the tube was good or bad. We would buy a new tube and go back and try to fire up the TV. It often seemed to require more than one trip to get the TV operational again. What the mean time between failures? It seemed like it was 45-60 days but that is pure SWAG at this point.


Tubes were relatively easy to test and replace. It was something we could do ourselves. Anything else required the need of a TV repairman or taking it to the TV repair shop. That was usually a horrible and costly experience in terms of waiting for the repairman, being price gouged, and usually not having ones TV for several days. Back then, this was a major hardship as most of the households in our socio-economic class had just one TV in the house.

I often chuckle when I consider that since 1990 we have had more TVs in our house than people. Many folks have TVs in the main living or family room, the kitchen, the bedrooms, and recreation rooms or dens. Back then in the incessant TV repair days, it would have been considered decadent and excessive to have TVs in the kitchen and bedrooms. Now it is simply commonplace.

Beyond the repairs, the TVs needed constant fiddling when they were working properly. We were constantly adjusting the horizontal and vertical holds, dialing the fine tuning, and, of course, playing with the antennae. You could be watching something in glorious black and white, no problems, and then, all of a sudden, the picture would go wacky. Dad or I were up in a jiffy playing with the dials to bring the picture back. Most of the time, this was easily done. Other times, we did the best we could and ended up watching with random flickers or even ghost images.

What an improvement today’s TVs are. The solid state electronic tuning self adjusts and cable makes the signal digital and quite stable. Almost nothing ever goes wrong with the TVs either. When something does, it is often easier to simply replace them rather then repair them.
Innovations: There have been innovations to the television over the years. Certainly, the advent of color was huge. Certainly, the recent development of large flat screens and HD is quite impressive. Is there any other way to watch football these days? Even surround sound has given us the term Home Theater. Yet, the most important developments from my perspective are the remote control and cable/dish TV.

There were remotes as far back as the early 1960s. They were electromechanical as they actually, physically turned the channel knob by sending a radio beam to TV. They were expensive and I am guessing because they never really caught on, they were not too reliable.

In childhood, I had a friend whose father was alcoholic, domineering, and oddly kind of endearing. He did not have a remote control, yet he never changed the channel himself. He would bellow for his son to come and change it. In the summer, his voice could be heard outside while his son was playing baseball with the neighborhood kids. It was pretty funny and his habit became something of legend.

Remote controls became commonplace when TVs went solid state. Instead of being electromechanical devices, they were pure electronic. The first remotes made noise because the knob was physically turned. The electronic innovation made it more silent, instant, and much more effective.

The remote allowed men to channel surf. Women rarely seem to do this. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld summed it up best when he said, “men don’t care what is on TV, they only care what else is on TV.” This might be the truest maxim ever uttered by a comedian. Channel surfing is the art of watching what else is on TV. It is the constant search for a show that probably doesn’t exist. It speaks to the short attention span of the surfer and is totally irritating to others watching the same TV but not holding the remote control or “clicker.” Channel surfing is the reason most households have more TVs then people.

My father was one of the pioneering channel surfers. It began in the era where there was still only one TV in the house. It was pre-cable. With both UHF and VHF stations, there were probably 10-12 channels to watch. This first remote did not have a key pad meaning that one could not dial in any channel at any time. One could only move one channel up or down at a time. It was a crude instrument.

Dad quickly became a master of this new sport of channel surfing. We would all be watching something and then, we would be watching something else. But it wasn’t abrupt or noticeable, it was quite subtle. He kept the remote at his side; you didn’t know he had it in his hand. He would fire from the hip to maintain the stealth profile. His true genius and great innovation was when he changed the channel. He always used the blank second between TV show and commercial, or a similar blank transition within a particular show or movie. It was silent and virtually undetectable. As my mother and sisters were not expecting surfing of this caliber in these early days of the modern remote control, it would take up to five minutes before they realized they weren’t watching the Errol Flynn movie any more. They would start questioning, “hey what happened to the movie, who changed the channel.” My dad would sit there stoic and act unaware. I could detect a wry smile however. It was pretty hilarious back then. Nowadays, everyone knows and expects men to channel surf. It is not as big a deal today. If anyone really just wants to watch one show, they simply move on to another television.

I do believe that the cable folks put soft porn on late night TV basically as a speed bump to the male channel surfing population.

The other great innovation is that of cable and dish TV. With cable, we have gone from the original 3 or 4 channels to 300-400 channels. There are channels catering to every whim and need. There are a dozen news channels, another half a dozen dedicated to financial news, there are nature, science, history, and shopping channels. There are dozens of movie channels: old movie, new movie, suspense movie, mystery movie, and comedy movie channels. There are channels for local weather, heck there are 2-3 channels just dedicated to weather. One can watch local school pageants and sporting events on the public access station. In DC, there is even a station that broadcasts the departure and arrival screens at National and Dulles airports. If all this were not enough, we now have pay per view and free on-demand movies and TV shows. The offerings are limitless.

Oddly, with this virtually limitless, I often find myself saying, “wow there is nothing on.” The same was true when we only had 4 channels. It is amazing that it is also true with 500 channels. There was a New Yorker cartoon a few years ago that captured this. A man is sitting in an easy chair with a clicker in his hand aimed at a TV. He was saying “398, 399, 400… darn there is nothing on.”

This being said here are two recent TV experiences in which there actually was something worth watching with minimal surfing.

December 23rd: Most of the year it is dark when I wake up for work. About 60-70% of the days I am home, I will jump on my stationary bike and pedal for 40 minutes. Because riding a stationary bike can be just about as boring as watching paint dry, I have the bike in front of TV in our basement.

It was not until we moved to Illinois, that I really had the time in the morning to cycle. I guess it is the difference between a 30-40 minute commute versus the 90 minute Connecticut to Mid-Town version.

I liked to bicycle early when I was traveling and living in hotels. They would have a TV in the hotel gym but it was often on the news because that is what the other hotel guests seemed to prefer. In my own house, I had total freedom. So, what to watch?

I tried movies because they were my first and favorite choice, but I could never ever watch a full movie in 40 minutes. That was just frustrating. I then tried to watch sit-com re-runs on Nick-at-Nite, TBS, or other local channels. But, I ride 40 minutes and that was good for one sit-com and a teasing, frustrating, part of another. Plus, I hated all the commercials. The news did not hold my interest very long, unless for the days there were really big breaking stories but thankfully those are few and far between.

Finally, I settled on the History Channel. They have a great series in the morning beginning at 5 am Central Time called, The History Classroom. It runs for 45 minutes and is always very interesting. As my alarm goes off at 5, I am not on the bike until 5:10, so I miss the beginning but enjoy the whole show and always learn something new.

Of course this is a sign of getting old. Old people watch the Discovery and History Channels. I am guilty as charged. But, it is always interesting and the shows are well done using history professors and authors making statements throughout the show. The stories are actually acted out and reasonably well given the limited production budget of the show and the epic nature of much of the subject matter.

I have seen shows on Pearl Harbor, Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, Jamestown, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington to name a few. They provide pretty in-depth looks at the events and the people often dispelling misconceptions that are quite common.

On December 21st, I watched Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas. It was amazing. I had always heard of the pagan roots that Christmas celebrations actually overlay. It had to do with the winter solstice, December 21st, the shortest day and hence longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere where Christmas celebrations really developed and took hold.

There were pagan festivals of light in many cultures to counter-balance the longest night of the year. The Norse celebrated the Yule from December 21st through early January often as long as twelve days (the twelve days of… hmmm). They would burn giant logs, Yule logs, and feast and party until the log was totally burned out.

At this point of winter, they would also slaughter animals so they would not have to feed them through the winter. It was the only time of the year when these Northerners would have fresh meat thus adding to the festive nature of this time of the year. In Germany, they might even bring evergreen boughs and eventually trees into the home to both add color and portend the return of spring.

In Rome, where the weather was more temperate, the winter solstice was more of a harvest celebration called Saturnalia. Saturn was the god of agriculture. It was a hedonistic time that lasted a month where the social order was reversed and peasants were in charge. It is commonly believed that Pope Julius I (337-352), set Christmas as December 25th so as to overlay Saturnalia. No one knew the exact date of the birth of Christ. Easter was the bigger celebration in the early days of the faith.

With the middle ages, Christmas replaced the original pagan holidays but retained many of the pagan rituals. People would attend mass and then participate in Mardi Gras like bacchanalian festival. The poor would go to the homes of the rich where they would be served food and drink. If the rich did not open their doors and serve the poor well they would be pestered with mischief or worse. It sounds a lot like Saturnalia. With the coming of the puritans, England actually suppressed the celebration of Christmas because of the un-Christ like behaviors and pagan roots.

This Puritan view extended to the United States. From 1659-1681, Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone caught celebrating it was fined five schillings. The TV show even reported that for the first 20-30 years of the United States, most people worked on December 25th including Congress. Another interesting fact is that a 1928 Christmas class riot (mischief out of control?) in New York City motivated the city council to establish a police department. Most will not know and be quite surprised that Christmas was not made a federal holiday until June 26, 1870!

Christmas celebrations were transformed in the 1800s in England and the United States. These changes have influenced and shaped how the holiday is celebrated around the world. First off, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens wrote stories, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon and A Christmas Carol respectively, to show a more sophisticated and honorable way to celebrate Christmas. The focus became on charity, good will, family and specifically children.
Washington Irving even helped set the stage by proclaiming St. Nicholas and his Dutch manifestation, Sinter Klaas, the patron saint of New York in his History of New York. Santa Claus, stockings, and gifts for children became set in concrete with an Episcopal minister, Clement Clarke Moore, penning a poem for his daughters entitled An Account of a visit from St. Nicholas in 1822. The first line of this poem is “Twas the Night before Christmas.” St. Nicholas was depicted as “a right jolly old elf” and had "a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer."

The famed political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, finished the transformation of the goodly St. Nicholas of Patara circa the 300s AD to Santa Claus with his 1881 drawing. Nast also gave us the North Pole, the elves, the workshop and Mrs. Claus.

http://www.the-north-pole.com/history/images/nast3.jpg

These changes were accompanied with a simultaneous embracing of the holiday, the idea of gift giving, and Santa Claus by retail establishments. Stores started advertising Christmas specials in the 1820s. At a Philadelphia store in 1841, thousands showed up to view a life-sized model of Santa Claus. Soon live Santas were in the stores. Sometime in the 1890s, the Salvation Army dressed unemployed men as Santa Claus to solicit donations to provide Christmas meals for the needy.

The Christmas tree was introduced to England and shortly thereafter to the US by none other than Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert. He did this in 1846.

With movies and television, the popularization of the holiday and these modern icons has continued to evolve with the Miracle on 34th Street to The Grinch that Stole Christmas to A Christmas Story to Christmas with the Kranks. Every year new movies and songs come out. I can barely keep

December 27th: It was kind of a sad day. It was a big news day. I awoke to find Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day surfing in and around CNN. I realized that the former prime minister was exactly my age. The TV was great but after a couple of hours, I got tired of watching the same stock footage and listening to the talking head experts from this university or that Federal Agency. They did not seem any more expert than some of the smart folks who are reading this letter.

A happy and healthy 2008 to one and all.

November 2007: The Glory of Fall

After the October letter about Genocide, I needed something much calmer, serene, and perhaps even humorous to write about. As November progressed, I noticed something odd and intriguing. The leaves around Chicago were taking forever to turn color and fall. In most years, the leaves turn color in October and by the beginning of November, the show, as they say, is over. The leaves are all down and winter is in the air. That was not the case this year.

You might be thinking, oh no he is going to write about global warming. The case for that is quite apparent. Fall is falling later because the planet is warming. In X years, with the melting polar ice caps, land masses will be smaller, coastal cities will be under water, and the interior of the continents will all be desert. This may happen in fifty or five hundred years. I thought about writing about this but it could be just as depressing as writing about the Armenian Genocide.

Instead, I thought I would write about the glory of fall, my favorite season. I have always loved fall or autumn. It is the season of back to school. It is the harvest season, the bountiful time of harvest feasts and rituals, the time of Thanksgiving in the United States. It is the season of Halloween, a spiritual season when the heritage and vestige of Druid beliefs hang rich in the air. It is the season of the leaves on the trees turning vibrant colors and falling perfuming the air with that rich ripe fragrance.

Fall is supposed to be the season of death. Things mature, ripen, and then beginning to die. Things go dormant for six months until spring, the season of rebirth and renewal. Yet, I never have really felt that way. First of all, with it being the back to school season, fall was always like the start of a new year. It was a time of excitement and renewal. It was a time of beginnings and I was always enthused about it. Plus, because of the colors and bounty, I never felt the sense of the year dying until the trees were barren and the ground began to freeze. Only then did it kind of sink in.

The reverence for the fall began back in elementary school. It was at Robert Burns School in Miss Fletcher’s science class. She gave us the assignment of collect various leaves, putting them into a notebook or scrapbook, noting the name of the tree, and perhaps some elementary classification of the leaves. It was a long term assignment. She gave us a few weeks. I recall being third, fourth grade, or maybe even fifth grade.

I really got into this assignment. I was fascinated with it. I had never really looked at trees or their leaves with such scrutiny. It was like a whole new world had opened up. I collected as many as I could. I used cellophane tape and staples to hold them onto loose leaf paper. I did not use construction paper and neither invisible tape nor glue sticks were invented yet. I wrote in pencil and crayon (Sharpies were not even a glint in my eye back then) on each page describing the type of tree and facts about the leaves. Were the leaves serrated, lobed, concave? I simply made a cover page with another loose leaf sheet and then put the whole thing in an old binder. I thought about stapling the sheets but the leaves made the book to thick and awkward for that.

I believe I had leaves from seventeen or eighteen trees. They included Sugar Maple, Hard Maple, Oak, Elm, Magnolia, Sycamore, Beech, Box Elder, a variety of fruit trees, and others I cannot remember. Given we were living in Detroit; it was impressive to collect so many different specimens in our neighborhood. The prize specimen in my collection was the leaves of a Ginkgo tree. My friends Glenn Baugh and Mary Simmons told me of this tree indigenous to Japan that was on the grounds of Cooley High School right near their homes. I followed them home from school and collected my Ginkgo leaves. It was pretty cool.

I was proud of my work. It was not the prettiest presentation but it was a most thorough effort. Others turned in works of art. Clearly, their parents helped them though that was not apparent to me back then. I just thought they were both smarter and neater. My work was my own and I got an A. I was very proud

I was so proud, that I decided this was a work worthy of keeping. So, I put it on the small bookcase in my room. The following year, I thought I would look at again and perhaps even add to it. I was shocked when I looked upon my pride and joy. The leaves which were colorful when first mounted had all turned brown. Not only had they turned brown, they became so brittle that the mere turning of the page had them crumbling and making a mess. I realized simultaneously that cellophane tape and staples were not the best way to mount leaves either. Oh well, the binder is long gone, but the memory is preserved in this letter. Because of that project, I have had a fondness for the season and the falling leaves ever since.

Back then folks used to burn their leaves in the street by the curb in front of their houses. The fall air was fragranced with the smoke of burning leaves. It was quite pleasant and something seasonal people looked forward to and actually liked. Somehow by the late 1960s, probably because of more and more mature trees, the number of leaves grew so much that the burning of leaves became a health hazard. The air, literally, became thick with smoke that burned our eyes and irritated our throats. The practice of burning leaves was soon outlawed.

All the seasons are the same length, officially, on the calendar. But in my youth, in Michigan, it seemed that summer and winter were very long. Spring was just April and May. Fall seemed like it was only the month of October. September was still summer and November definitely seemed like winter.

There was the phenomenon of Indian Summer. Indian Summer is a late fall, unseasonably, warm spell after at least one killing frost and a period of cool or cold weather. I remember a one Indian Summer day quite clearly. I cannot remember the year or whether we were in elementary school or junior high. But I remember the day. It was Veterans’ Day.

Back then Veterans’ Day was not celebrated on Mondays, it was observed on November 11th. It was originally Armistice Day when Germany surrendered and ended WWI in 1918. Congress made it Veterans’ Day in 1954. It was, from a kid’s perspective a minor national holiday because the Detroit Public Schools only gave us a half day off. It was like a waste, we were not in school long enough to do anything especially since all the students were looking forward to ending the day early. It was equally lame because for all the build-up, it was only a half day off and that went faster and with less fanfare then we all expected. Except this one year…

The leaves were already off the trees. The landscape was barren and brown. It had been cold, winter coat cold. When school let out at 11:30 or noon, we were surprised by just how sunny, hazy and warm it was. It was shirtsleeve weather. One of the guys suggested we meet at Cooley High School, and play some football. Sure, why not.

We went home, had lunch, and biked over to the high school. All the athletic fields were empty; we had the run of the place. So, we decided to play on the main field, the high school stadium. It was great. We laid our jackets and sweatshirts in a pile on the sidelines and eight, or so, of us lived gridiron dreams in a mostly touch game. I remember it being mostly Boy Scout buddies. Amazingly, it was only that one day of Indian Summer. The next day it was freezing cold again. It was the best Veterans’ Day during my years in the Detroit Public Schools.

Certainly, football became more and more part of the fall, mostly as a spectator. As I got older, the best fall Saturdays involved being in Ann Arbor and going to football games in Michigan Stadium. This November 17th we drove from Chicago to Ann Arbor on for the Michigan – Ohio State game. On the way, I could not help but notice the numbers of trees with most of their leaves still on them. For this part of the country, it was quite indicative of the late fall we were experiencing.

While living in Michigan, I thought Michigan had everything a lover of fall could want. With four seasons, there was usually a glorious and colorful fall. As a Boy Scout, I enjoyed the fall campouts. It was a great time to be in the woods. The sunlight seemed more golden amid the red, yellow, orange leaves. Usually the weather was great and there were certainly less bugs than in the spring and summer.

In June of 1990, we moved to Wilton, CT. Wilton was first settled in 1651 by the non-indigenous as an extension of Norwalk. It was incorporated as a separate town in 1802. It was a rural farming town until the mid-1990s. Since then, it has basically become a bedroom community of 17,000. It is both a Connecticut town and a suburb in the New York metroplex.

The landscape is undulating. At one point way back when, it was covered with glaciers. As the glaciers, receded they left a behind an undulating rocky terrain that basically went down hill all the way to Long Island Sound.

Until the late 1950s, Wilton was mostly farm land. I read that back then, from where we lived atop Cavalry Hill in the southeast corner of the town, one could see Long Island sound which was about seven miles away. Today, that would be impossible. When it was farmland, there were no trees; the land had all been cleared. There has been fifty some years of re-forestation. In the summers, I could not even see my neighbors’ houses for the dense vegetation.

As a result, the falls in Wilton, in Connecticut in general, are spectacular. The plentiful trees give plenty of color. This undulating countryside provides panoramic vistas. Add to all of this the charm of New England wood frame homes and the stone walls that part of Connecticut is known for, it makes for lovely views breathtaking views..

October 1990 was our first fall in Connecticut. I remember driving around Wilton on a beautiful sunny fall day. I literally thought about pinching myself, it was that picturesque. It was raining leaves, the air was crisp, the sky pure blue, and the sun illuminated all with that golden color reserved only for the fall.

When I say raining leaves, it literally did that. I recall another time in the late 1990s. It was raining leaves. I stood outside our home for a long time in amazement. There were thousands of leaves in the air about me at any given instant. It just didn’t stop.

Another memorable fall in Connecticut was in 1999. That summer we experienced both a severe drought and extremely hot temperatures. As a result, the leaves started changing colors and falling right after Labor Day. By the middle of October, the show was over, the trees were barren. The fall of 1999 was as early as the fall this year is late.

There is a phrase, “looking at the world through rose colored, glasses.” We have all heard it. It is used to suggest that one always sees things better than they really are.

I do not think I look at the world this way. The glasses I prefer are actually orange in color. After a bike crash in which the metal rimmed sunglasses I was wearing caused two lacerations requiring stitches, I decided to by sport glasses with plastic rims and lenses to minimize this kind of injury should I ever take another spill. I settled on Smith Sliders, made in France, with interchangeable lenses for different lighting conditions. The pair I bought had brown, orange, yellow, and clear lenses. I could see where the brown and the clear would come in handy. I was not sure about the yellow and orange. The salesman told me, “try the orange lenses. If you do, you will probably use them all the time.”

I did not believe him. But, I was curious. After trying them a few times, the salesman was absolutely correct. These are the lenses I use like 90% of the time. They make everything brighter and clearer. Even on sunny days they do the job. They also make everything more colorful and vibrant. There is more texture and contrast to everything you see. The world simply looks duller without them. This is why, I am certain, serious marksmen and skeet shooter don yellow or orange glasses. They brighten up and add contrast to what they are aiming at. So, in the height of fall, riding in either the Connecticut or, now, Illinois the colors of the season are even more beautiful.

As I finish this letter, all the leaves are down around here in Chicagoland and the weather has been wintry for the past week. The weather report is even for a few inches of snow this weekend. The leaves are down, it is cold, and snow is forecasted. While it is not official until December 21st, it is now winter in my book.

October 2007: House Resolution 106

On Wednesday October 10th, the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27-21 to send House Resolution 106 to the full House for a vote. This kind of thing happens all the time. Bills and resolutions are crafted, debated, and voted on in committee every day. This is the business of legislation. It is what our elected officials do.

Yet, this resolution, this HR 106, was significant to me, significant to Armenians in the United States, more so than any other under consideration this year and maybe even this century. It is the Resolution entitled: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution.

The passing of this Resolution, only through committee mind you, made National and International News. The government of Turkey went all out to defeat HR 106 in the Foreign Affairs Committee. They had spent millions on PR firms, one of which employed former Congressman and Presidential hopeful, Dick Gephardt. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out publicly against it. These two, members of the Joint Chiefs, and Turkish officials, personally called Congressmen on the Foreign Affairs Committee to defeat this Resolution. It passed anyway.

Normally, I would have addressed this issue in my April letter. This month is a true exception. The issue was huge for any and all Armenians that remotely pay heed to our heritage. C-Span was running non-stop in our house that Wednesday and Thursday of that week. There were Op-Ed pieces in all the major newspapers both pro and con. The internet was abuzz with articles informing us and others beseeching us to call congressmen to thank those that supported HR 106 and to encourage them to stay the course given the extreme pressure to either drop this Resolution or to vote against it if it ever comes to a vote.

Actually, this year is exceptional beginning with the assassination of Hrant Dink back in January and the opening of the Holy Cross Church on the Island of Aghtamar in Lake Van in March. Both of these events were subjects of my April letter. I had no choice but to write about this latest issue in this letter.

So, what is this Resolution about? HR 106, Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution, states that:
The House of Representatives--
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President's annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.RES.106

It is worth reading the entire text of the Resolution. The findings provide the underpinning and facts, acknowledged by those that wrote and sponsored the resolution, as to why this resolution is important. Included in these Findings include:

1. Acknowledgement that the leaders of the time, Talaat – Minister of the Interior, Enver – Minister of War, and Jemal – Minister of the Navy, were all convicted of war crimes for what happened

2. Two million Armenians were deported resulting in the death of one and half million.

3. This crime, this deportation, is in fact Genocide and characterized as such by
Rafael Lemkin who coined the term in 1944.

4. Noted the efforts of the Honorable Henry Morganthau, then Ambassador from the US to Turkey, to acknowledge this crime and his efforts to get the US and other
Western Governments to stop it.

5. There are thirty such points in all that really summarize the issue and justification for why the US needs to recognize what happened as a Genocide.

There is certainly a frustration with Armenians to the support that our Executive Branch gave to our ally Turkey. Turkey did recall, symbolically, their Ambassador to the US. That was predicted. They did the same to France when they passed a similar resolution.

Worse, however, is the gun Turkey put to the US head. Before the Foreign Relations Committee vote, there were reports that the Turks were considering invading Northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish insurgents into Turkey. Southeastern Turkey is heavily Kurdish. Kurds have been persecuted. Their language and culture have been repressed. They have over the past thirty or so years become revolutionary. The PKK is the party (think PLO) fighting for Kurdish rights and self-determination within or independent of Turkey. Of late, they have taken refuge in and use Northern Iraq as their base of operations. This area of Iraq, oil rich, is essentially a Kurdish run part of Iraq, a Kurdish autonomous region within Iraq. The Turks are afraid that if this region becomes a separate country, the Kurds in Southeastern Turkey would want to join them.

Upon HR 106 passing through the Foreign Relations Commmittee, the Turkish Parliament immediately debated and passed a their own resolution granting permission for the Armed Forces to invade Iraq. Unbelieveable.

As I write this letter, the news regarding Turkey has certainly moved away from anything Armenian related. It is now about the Turkish Army fighting the Kurds in southeastern Turkey.

As I type this paragraph, it is Sunday evening, October 28th. I am in Atlanta watching the fourth game of the World Series. I looked up Turkey in Google News. The first article that popped up was from the Guardian Unlimited entitled: Turkey Kills 20 Kurdish rebels as hope fades for a peaceful solution.

Iraq has sent a delegation to Ankara to no avail. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has accused Turkey of not seeking a peaceful solution. Massoud Barzani, leader of the Iraqi Kurds, has stated that "It was obvious that Turkey decided even before the delegation arrived that they would not accept any kind of peaceful solution." There is no mention of anything related to Armenians or HR 106 in any of these articles. It is a win-win for the Turkish Government. HR 106 is out of the news, the passage of it certainly diminished, and they are on the move to solve their Kurdish problem. Mike Keefe, of the Denver Post, captured this very well in his October 18th cartoon at the top of this posting. (Thank you Mike Keefe for your permission to post this cartoon!)

What baffles me is why the Turkish Government is so paranoid about this issue? They pay millions for lobbyists to fight against the use of the G-word and to fight Resolutions like HR 106 in the United States and other countries.

As I have stated before, I would think Turkey should recognize what happened as the crime it is and reach an agreement with the Republic of Armenia, their neighbor. It would be cheaper in the long run and would enhance their reputation in the international community. They could make some trade concessions and maybe even guarantee the sovereignty of Armenia. I think they would not even have to give up any lands though the return of the ancient city of Ani which borders Armenia would certainly help seal the deal. I still think they could invite Armenians back to live in cities we once called home in Eastern Turkey. It would be a magnanimous gesture and I am almost certain very few would even consider taking them up on it.

I have read articles that talk about the Turkish psyche. There seems to be a national paranoia that the west wants to carve up what was left of the Ottoman Empire. They view this genocide issue as part of that on-going fight with the west.

By admitting to the crimes of ninety years ago by a previous regime would end all of this and allow both countries to move on. They missed the golden opportunity to do just this when Armenia first secured their independence with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.
I got an e-mail as part of the Armenian listserv administered by Professor Muge Gocek of the University of Michigan. This listing was an article from the Zaman Today, entitled The Armenian Psyche: Trans-Generational Transmission by Dogu Ergil. Ergil’s main premise was that without closure, the victimized generation “transfers these unfinished psychological tasks to future generations.” The tasks are to get resolution, to get closure.

…it seems seeking peace of mind and a diplomatic peace with Turkey by the Armenians -- especially those living in the diaspora, who have little connection
with the needs of citizens of the Republic of Armenia -- will not be that easy until and unless the mourning process is healthily concluded. Of course there is plenty to be done by the Turks to put the minds and souls of the Armenians to rest by re-evaluating their common past. This has to be done not by the politicians but rather by the people who are in direct contact, trying to connect their futures.

Closure: Issa Boulos is a well known oud player and composer in Chicago. He has organized a University of Chicago based ensemble of professional and amateur musicians and singers that perform music of the Middle East. They meet once a week to practice and give several concerts a year. I would love to be part of such a group but for the fact that they practice at such an inconvenient time, mid-week late afternoon. I just cannot make the rehearsals.

Two weeks ago, Issa sent out an e-mail announcing the formation of a Turkish Classical and Folk Ensemble, Turk Sanat Musiki Sevenler Dernegi, that practices every Thursday evening from 8:30 – 10:30 pm. This sounds much more doable. I inquired further and actually talked to a Ms. Meltam Tunar on the phone.

Meltam was quite pleasant. We realized that we both loved the music and she was excited to meet anyone that shared this passion. I noticed her last name, Tunar, and commented that it is the same last name of the famous Turk-Gypsy clarinet virtuoso and composer, Şukru Tunar. She responded, “you are knowledgeable of this music. No, I am not related to Şukru, but you will be amazed to know that my father’s name is Şukru.” I thought that was pretty cool.
I was really thinking about joining their group. It would have been fun. It would have been a good meld of our cultures. It would have been a re-uniting of cultures that overlap more than either side wants to admit.

Then I asked her what this TACA building is where the rehearsals would be held. She told me it was the Turkish American Cultural Alliance Building in Chicago. OK… where else should such a group meet. I would have preferred a neutral building but OK.

Meltam told me that Saturday, November 10th would be their first concert. The Turkish Counsul would preside over the event which is to commemorate the birthday of Kemal Attaturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. This last bit of information, simply took the wind out of my sails. There was no way I could participate in such a thing, no matter how much the I loved the music.

I took a poll of several of my Armenian friends and family. Everyone said something to the equivalent, “Gee whiz, I don’t know how you could perform at such an event. You just can’t.” I even asked my musician friends. These are buddies that love Turkish-Armenian music so much that if they could make a decent living at it, would play full time. Even these guys grimaced, slowly shook their heads, and in low voices muttered “you just can’t do that… you can’t.” I knew that. I felt that. I will pass on what sounds like it should have been enjoyable and perhaps enriching experience.

That is the problem with this Genocide issue between Armenians and Turks. There is no closure. I would like to see a time where I could feel comfortable joining such a group. I am not talking reparations. I am talking about resolution to our history where the peoples can meet and celebrate the joint culture without all of this hanging over our heads and making such experiences uncomfortable. I do not see it happening soon. Pity.

In the October 29th USA Today, there was an article about a concert in that took place Sunday, October 28th in the Zion Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Tennessee. 83 year old, Andrew Frierson an opera singer with the New York Civic Opera gave was the performer. Frierson is black. Frierson’s grandfather and great-grandfather were slaves owned by one Thomas J. Frierson who owned the Maury Farm outside of Columbia. The concert was the idea of Elizabeth Queener, the great-great-grandaughter of Thomas J. Frierson.

For this concert, the black part of the audience, many named Frierson, sat on the main floor where the whites would sit back in the days of slavery. The white audience sat in the balcony where the slaves had been relegated. This symbolic gesture was to pay tribute to the descendents of slaves their ancestors had once owned. It was a symbol of closure.
Andrew Frierson said, “Slavery is a part of all our history. We must understand and acknowledge where we came from in order to move forward.” Pete Frierson, another black attendee said, “it’s good that we’ve gotten to the point in this country that we can talk and communicate to one another.”

This concert in Tennessee is part of the process of closure. It is the result of other acts of recognition and closure. That is what Armenians and Turks need.

September 2007: Nature vs. Nurture

As written in an earlier letter, my advisor was Dr. Fran Cousins back in 1972: my sophomore year. She was a Professor of Sociology and as such strongly suggested that I take courses in Psychology and Sociology. I resisted her advice and encouragement. I thought it was all pseudo-science and attracted students who liked to wax eloquent in a vocabulary I still refer to as psycho-babble.

Still, I was curious and had been for a few years about this psychology stuff. I had been since high school. I studied mostly science and math. Both are based on logic. Science was based on the scientific method of hypothesizing a theory and verifying or negating such empirically.

Mathematics was based on a set of axioms or basic assumptions upon which the rest of a specific field of mathematics is based on the logical consequences of these axioms.

If psychology and sociology meant anything, they had to mean something to me in these terms. Back then, I was as yet, ignorant of approximate mathematics: probability and statistics. It was a field of mathematics that deals with decision making in the face of uncertainty. It is a field of mathematics that looks for trends, partial trends, correlations, and partial correlations. It is a field of mathematics well suited in both the quality and social sciences.

In 1972, while ignoring Dr. Cousins advice, I was still a sophomore. As such, I was subject to many sophomoric interests. I had over my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, wanted to know more about the psycho-babble other sophomores were bandying about with such assuredness. I wanted to know what they were talking about and how to participate in such conversations intelligently and defend my position.

My position was quite simple. I believed in a soul and innate qualities that were largely responsible for the talents, skills, behavior, and development of people. This was supported mostly by the science of genetics, the then recent work of Watson and Crick defining DNA, and my strong belief in the existence and power of the soul.

Back then, most of my sophomore fiends in psychology and sociology believed more in Behaviorism. This concept often attributed to the eminent Harvard professor B. F. Skinner. He simply believed and advocated that behavior. He had written a landmark book in 1948, Walden Two, the outlined this basic belief. Skinner advocated that environment determines behavior. Behavior can be changed by changing the environment. Skinner actually showed this experimentally on animals. He had a theory that behavior could be changed by creating a new environment of positive reinforcement.

The argument was simply one of Nature vs. Nurture. Is our personality, who we are, how we behave, and what we do or do not achieve based on innate traits we are born with (Nature) or due to the environment, opportunities, and education we grow up in (Nurture)? This is one of the key sophomoric issues that occupied a large part of our general discussions back then.

Out of school, unless one is actually working in the field, such concerns tend to fade into the background. Yet, this Nature vs. Nurture thing never really went away. It was always lingered just under the surface. It was around when it came to raising children. The concept of positive reinforcement was pretty much at the heart of the self-esteem movement that dominated the home and school rearing of children the past twenty years.

The same applies to management of people in the workplace. Most of the management training most of us receive today is based on positive reinforcement and creating an environment where people can succeed in helping the organization reach its goals.

Both the child rearing and workplace management philosophies are based on or are an evolution of, at least in my limited knowledge, Skinner’s theories. Furthermore, the tenets of Quality Management are rooted in process development and management. One way of looking at this is to set the right environment, design the process, and then provide the proper system of reinforcement i.e. manage the people and process to deliver the expected and continually improving results. Even though I was a Nature kind of sophomore back in 1972, it is clear that I have been a practicing behaviorist, an adherent of the Nurture school, in my professional career.
So, which is the answer, Nature or Nurture? The answer is both. My background in Quality Management also included becoming a Statistician, things do not have to be one extreme or the other, and they do not have to be either black or white. Things are often shades of grey; part Nature and part Nurture. Depending on the situation, I now believe that we behave with some mixture of Nature and Nurture.

Consider the following. Stratify the students in high school in the United States by household income. Compare and contrast the top 20% vs. the bottom 20% of this sorting by household income and answer the following questions which can easily be measured, should anyone care and have the resources to do so. What is the percentage of each population that:

- Goes to College/University
- Goes to a Top 25 University
- Serves time in the Armed Forces
- Is arrested

I am certain that there will be quite measurable and significant differences in these percentages.

Can we attribute this to Nature? Can we say Nature has made some smarter and thus wealthier? If the stratification of household wealth shows clear race or religious differences there are many that will easily jump on this correlation to show the superiority of one race or religion over the other.

We can also make the case for Nurture. There are definitely more opportunities for the wealthy growing up in a community with a collective expectation that everyone goes to college. These are significant environmental factors that reinforce expectations and ambitions from birth. They cannot be easily discounted.

Yet, it is not cut and dry. I know a derelict from the most privileged class to a poorest of the poor from Harlem that has a PhD from Harvard. Nature may have played a larger factor for these two than the majority in their socio-economic class. It is not cut and dry because there are so many people with so many different Nature given physical and mental traits. There are also so many environmental factors from parents, teachers, and other influencing adults when one is growing up. The influences can be most positive on one hand to most abusive on the other. A physical or sexual abuse certainly influences what one becomes.

We are definitely born with certain physical traits. The science of genetics has definitely advanced since 1972. Based on the basic DNA work of Watson and Crick, the Human Genome Project was an ambitious thirteen year project ending in 1993 to identify the 23,000 or so genes in the human DNA. Before this project and more so because of it, scientists are now able to pinpoint genes various physical behaviors including:

- 80% of the risk of developing Alzheimer’s is genetic
- One gene dictates the way nicotine is metabolized. So, if one is a smoker this gene predicts the number of cigarettes one will smoke

Research is being done on genetic predisposition to alcohol and drug abuse and dependency. The study began in the 1970’s and has accelerated with the Human Genome Project. Henry Kranzler, Professor of Psychiatry at The University of Connecticut School of Medicine, stated:

There are now four genes that have been shown by multiple research groups to contribute to risk of alcoholism. This is a rapidly developing field, such that I would anticipate that up to another 10 such genes will be identified, with the findings replicated independently, in the next decade.

It is now widely accepted that genetic variation predisposed to alcohol and drug dependence, but it’s also very clear that without environmental factors – including access to alcohol and drugs – addictions don’t occur.

Genetic predisposition is not destiny. www.livescience.com/health/060718_nature_nurture.html

It is truly not cut and dry. It is not black and white. There are many factors some genetic and some environmental. There are probably significant random events that can have massive positive or negative effects that can keep one from either mitigate the predisposition or amplify it.

When I was reading Dr. Kranzler’s comments, I immediately thought about the effect of alcohol and alcoholism on the American Indians, Russians, and the Irish. Is there a predisposition for dependency in the Indians? Cleary, the problem was non-existent until alcohol was made available.

We have all heard the terms about how someone can either “hold” or “not-hold” their liquor. We usually attribute this phenomenon to physical make-up, family heritage, or ethnic background. If we filter out any politically incorrect innuendos or conclusions, we are really saying this is Nature at work. There is another factor to consider. Some drink often and excessively whereas others rarely drink. Are these two dimensions or factors related? Independent? How do they interact i.e. how do they work in conjunction?

Look at the following four combinations of two factors: Can/Cannot Hold Liquor and Drinks Often & Excessively/Rarely Drinks:

1. Drinks Often & Excessively AND Can Hold Liquor
2. Drinks Often & Excessively AND Cannot Hold Liquor

3. Rarely Drinks AND Can Hold Liquor
4. Rarely Drinks AND Cannot Hold Liquor

In each of the four combinations above, one could do a scientific study to try to determine the Nature and Nurture causes of the effect shown. There are probably several other factors that also determine the behavior. How do we use positive re-enforcement to move folks from 2 to 4. AA does exactly this combining a belief in a higher power and a system of positive re-enforcement

Clearly, scientists agree that many physical traits are driven by genetics, hence Nature. Eye color, hair color and baldness are examples. Even the predisposition for certain diseases such as heart conditions or cancer seem to run in some families. Yet, can we say the same for personality traits such as ambition vs. complacency, aggressiveness vs. passiveness, and congeniality vs. surliness? Do these come from within? Is one simply a “good egg” or a “bad egg?” Or are these traits learned?

If they are learned, they are learned at a very early age based raising my own children. Amazing personality traits were evident in both my son and daughter well before I would have thought they very much time to absorb them from the family environment. I could argue that they were born with these traits, they were genetically engrained every bit as much as their eye and hair color. I could also argue that while their eye and hair color is certainly genetic, certainly Nature driven, their little minds were empty and absorbed every little personality nuance from those around them the most, their parents, siblings, extended families.

The argument of Nature or Nurture quickly can become religious. At the extreme, a Nurture belief can take on aspects of Darwinism, survival of the fittest, and human beings are involved from apes. At the extreme in the Nature school, everything is cast from birth, it is all God’s will, and there is no free will. It is easy to see how a Nature – Nurture debate could quickly get peoples blood boiling.

One of the articles I read on the internet (www.trinity.edu/mkearl/socpsy-2.html) quoted from the International Social Survey Program a multi-country multi-university endeavor that included the University of Michigan… and thus had to be a valuable and true study. There were five factors that were surveyed against. I have edited the dimensions a bit to suit my own view of things:

Fate or God Factor: At the extreme, this is the relinquishing all free will. At a less extreme viewpoint, there is a God who may at times test us with trials and tribulations but may also answer our prayers and help us overcome illness or achieve what we seek.

Genetic Factor: Some people are born with “better” genes than others. Think of genius vs. autism, gifted athletic skill vs. birth defects. This is the heart of the Nature school.
Society/Environmental Factor: If the genetic factor is the heart of the Nature camp, this is the heart of Nurture. Ones environment can really influence and alter what one becomes in both positive and negative ways.

Work Factor: This is all about self-determination, initiative, and applying both to overcome what all the other factors may have thrown at you to define or re-define yourself.

Chance Factor: Good and bad things can happen to people that definitely influence what they are and what they can become.

These factors work for me. Everything I am or am no are due to The Genetics, Societal, Work, and Chance factors in some combination or weighted average. Work is truly the only one anyone can really control.

Notice that I had left out the Fate/God Factor. I could argue that fate vs. chance is a matter of belief or they are the same thing. Is winning the lottery chance or fate? Is not winning the lottery when the numbers you always play win but you forgot to buy a ticket chance or God’s will? Is getting cancer chance or fate? Is overcoming cancer against all prognostications chance or God’s will? I thought about merging the two factors, but I did not think of it long. Both work for me as well. There is most certainly chance… yes I am absolutely certain about uncertainty. I do believe in God, that each of us has a soul, and something, most likely this soul lives on after death.

So to conclude, I was once fully in the Nature school. Today, I find the five factor view a much better model to explain how things work. The topic of Nature vs. Nurture is very complicated with more variables and interactions that we can possibly track and use to predict. The factor model simply puts things in perspective.

I might have simply saved time by simply quoting Jawaharlal Nehru:

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

This was not the easiest letter to write. I thought I could have whipped it out quickly and eloquently provided some brilliant insights. I really struggled with it and had to push at the closing hours of this month to deliver this rambling discourse.

Maybe I should have taken Dr. Cousins advice way back in 1972.

August 2007: Summer Reading

My August letters seem to have a more reminiscent theme. I have written about Summer Festivals, the Atomic Bombs of World War II, and last year Porches. This month, I will continue that trend.

They call August the Dog Days of Summer. A website defines the Dog Days as “the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere - www.wilstar.com/dogdays.htm. It is apparent that August makes up the bulk of the time between “July and early September.” There was an alternate definition provided as well, “a period of stagnation or inactivity.”

August was certainly the Dog Days when I was growing up in Detroit. It was hot and humid. Boy Scout Summer Camp was over, we usually took vacations in July, swim lessons at Cooley High School were over or winding down, and other than cutting lawns, hanging out with buddies, and some pickup baseball games there was nothing to do. The Dog Days of Summer were a great time, however, to read.

Memory can be a patchwork and in that selective patchwork I remember reading on the front porch of our Strathmoor house. The image that is etched in my most pleasant memories is sitting on the glider of that porch reading.

Back then, summer reading lists from the schools simply did not exist, at least, not in the mid-1960 Detroit Public Schools. So, I was left to my taste and choices.

I recall one summer deciding to learn about the secrets of the atom, nuclear bombs and nuclear energy. I must have been between fifth and sixth grade. I left the shade to my bedroom window with an eastern exposure open enough so that the rising sun would wake me up at dawn. I would then read books about “the atom.”

Other than that, I remember reading stories. They were novels but I never called them that. I simply called them books. I favored adventure stories written especially for young teens or pre-teens. I read the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and even Nancy Drew. I enjoyed the perils and adventures of these young sleuths. There was no limit how trouble would always find them and how they would always solve the crime and win the day. They were great escapes and excellent reading practice, regardless of what teachers and other adults might have said. They were also great fun.

There was a series I could not get enough of back then. The funny thing is that I cannot remember the name of the books or the author. We could attribute this to being on This Side of Fifty, but that would be a bit unfair. I have been trying to find out the name of this series for at least thirty years.

What I do remember is that they were set in England; they were about a group of five or six schoolmates that all went to the same boarding school. There was a mix of girls and boys in the group. Their adventures were intriguing and either took place on their holidays. These books were at least twenty years old when I read them in the mid-1960s. So they were written in the 1930s or 40s.

The kids in this series were bright, charming, there was a hint of romance, and, certainly, taking daring risks against the advice of parents and teachers to solve the various crimes and capers. They always seemed about the age that I was whenever I was reading them. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew seemed to have this same timeless quality.

These types of books are immensely appealing. Teachers and parents are never sure whether to support the addiction to them or to criticize them as not being literature. The adult equivalents written by the likes of Robert Ludlum, and Nelson DeMille pose the same dilemma. Devoted fans love them, but critics fret about the enduring literary value.

I would love to find the name of the series I read growing up. I would love to get my hands on any book in the series and read it again today. I am very curious to see what I would think of it today, at this age.

I read every one of these series I could borrow from the Monnior Branch of the Detroit Public Library. The Monnior Branch was on the corner of Schaefer and Grand River in Detroit. It was maybe a mile or two from our house on Strathmoor. My mother first took me there when I was in first or second grade. I got a library card and we checked out books. At first, it was a passion for Dr. Seuss and then Henry Huggins that attracted me to the library.

The Monnior Branch was in an old red brick house. It was right next to the Police Station that served our neighborhood. At first, the place seemed large, almost endless to me. By the time we moved, the place had somehow gotten a bit smaller and cozier. It was an old fashioned library. There were no records, CDs, filmstrips or computers. There were just books. I do not even recall newspapers and periodicals. Most definitely there was no air conditioning. In the summer, they simply opened the windows.

After the age of twelve, I used to ride my bike to and from the library during summer vacation. I liked the independence of running my own errands. My bike did not have a basket and I did not use a backpack, so I would only take out one or two books at a time so I could still steer the bike without too much difficulty. I enjoyed going to the library and would do so four or five times a year. I never really got to know any of the staff except to say hello and exchange greetings.

In the summer of 1968, I had just graduated from the ninth grade at Cadillac Junior High School and awaiting my start at Cass Technical High School in the fall. While at the library, I saw for the first time in my years of frequenting the place, a young fellow about my age re-stocking books. I went up to the head librarian and inquired if I might be able to work there. To me it was a natural. I liked being around books. It was also a precursor to my current interests in Logistics where warehouse management and re-stocking play an important role. The librarian was quite pleasant and gave me a very short one page application to fill out. In January of 1969, I received a letter asking me to come in for an interview as they had an opening. We were just in the process of moving from Detroit and Cass Tech to Livonia and Stevenson High School. I had to call the head librarian and say no thank you. I was a bit sad to leave Cass Tech but more sad to have to pass up a job at the Monnior Branch of the Detroit Public Library.

As it turns out, the day I applied for the job was probably the last time I visited Monnior. There is no listing for that branch on the Detroit Public Library website. There is no reference for it when I google it. It seems the Monnior Branch of the Detroit Public Library is no more. Pity.
For this letter, I actually have been trying to find out the history of the Monnior Branch. When did it open? When did it close? What was the house before it became a library? Could I get a photo of the building to use in this letter? On the Detroit Public Library web page there is history tab. While informative, the history provided was general and did not get down to the branch by branch history. On the Contact Us page, they had phone numbers and e-mail addresses of the management team. So, I e-mailed the Director of Public Affairs. I am part of the public, so I thought this would be a good place to start. As I send this letter out, I have yet to hear back.

As the library did not carry The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, I had to actually buy those books. There was a little book store on Fenkell. It was a small shop from the era well before the mega Borders and Barnes and Noble stores. I cannot recall the name of this store front shop with the owner as the only employee. I used to save money from cutting lawns and allowances and bike over to this shop to buy a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew book.

I did not care if I could buy these books used or exchange them with friends. My classmate Glenn Baugh actually lent me several of the Tom Swift series.

Once I even read a Zane Grey book that was lying around the house. It was OK but I could not project myself into the characters as I could with these other teen adventure/mystery books. So, I have never read another.

This month I read another book in the same genre of those teen adventure stories I so fondly remember: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is the seventh and final installment of that series of this immensely popular series. I have read every book and seen every movie in that series. The movies are good but I actually like the books better.

The Harry Potter books are published by Scholastic Books. They are aimed at youngsters about the same age I am reminiscing about. While that is the target audience, the books are immensely popular with adults as well. On a recent vacation, when I was reading the book. I saw several other grown men reading the book as well.

It is more than a series, it is a franchise. There are Harry Potter movies based on the books and no end to logo merchandise of every kind one can think of. The author J.K. Rowling has become wealthy from this.

This latest Harry Potter book was the lead review in the New York Sunday Books supplement on August 12, 2007. The review was by none other than Christopher Hitchens the renowned political columnist and author. He was the keynote speaker at a Children of Armenia Fund banquet for which I was the emcee. I might have normally skipped the review but this time, given this personal connection, I most certainly read it. Mr. Hitchens also pointed out the similarity of the Potter series to the teenage adventure stories I have referred to. He recalled an essay by George Orwell exploring the addictive quality to these kinds of boarding school adventure stories. It seems Ms. Rowling definitely resurrected this genre in a most impressive way. She has appealed to the youth in a big way but also to the adult audience. Other’s have tried to capitalize using the Rowling model. The Lemony Snicket series comes to mind. But, this series has not captured the adult audience like the Potter series has.

There is also debate whether any of these books are good for children. Parents and other concerned adults, including teachers and clergy, get concerned whenever kids like these kinds of books to much. You hear that these kinds of adventure books are not really literature. They are the reading equivalent of fast food and empty calories. The religious right even worries about the sorcery and witchcraft that is central to the Potter series. I find myself on the side that anything that gets young people to read more and open their minds is a good thing. I also firmly believe that there are times when reading should just be entertaining and fun: especially when one is young, and especially in the summer. This is probably the reason every Harry Potter book has come out in the summer months. I am sorry the series has ended with this latest book.

There is one big difference between now and then. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was the only book I have read this summer. It is not for a lack of wanting to read more, but more so finding the time to do so. I do read, but mostly read articles and essays from the New Yorker. Certainly, the writing is superb and the subject matter is usually compelling. But, the New Yorker is designed to be read in short spurts, it is ideal for commuting by train. The magazine column size is ideal for folding the magazines into thirds, lengthwise, providing a most compact footprint when sitting in the middle seat of a three seat bench. It is also perfect for bathroom reading (which may be a subject all of its own in some future e-letter).

I do, however, continue to both buy and receive, as gifts, books that I truly want to read. I have a rather large pile of them. I find it amazing that I have not read Peter Balakian’s Burning Tigris, Vartan Gregorian’s memoirs, Elif Shafak’s Bastard of Istanbul, or Orhan Pamuk’s Snow. They sit, patiently, on the bookshelf awaiting my retirement.

July 2007: Caveat Emptor

The level of imports of all kinds from China and India has dramatically increased in the past decade. This is not news. We have all read the stories of domestic plants being downsized or shut down as production moves off-shore. There are numerous articles regarding the increasing consumption in China of steel, concrete and gasoline. Lately, the press has been rife with reports on product problems, mostly from China regarding defective tires, tainted pet foods and counterfeit poisonous toothpaste.

The question many are asking is how to control quality of the ever increasing number of raw materials, component parts, and finished goods that we are importing. Shoddy, poor quality, goods are one kind of problem but the substitution of diethylene glycol for glycerin in food product is outright dangerous and criminal.

This reminds us of the principle of Caveat Emptor, Buyer Beware. The Latin phrase is used to emphasize that this is an old and valued principle. The problem for consumers today is that they have to know the store, the manufacturer, and trust that both are invoking this principle of Caveat Emptor to the supplier of raw materials, component parts, and finished goods they get from around the world. The supply chains are complicated and long. Products flow from suppliers around the globe. Even raw materials and components sourced from domestic sub-suppliers may have raw materials that are imported from any number of global sources. Caveat Emptor.

In the world of Quality Management, Caveat Emptor often means one thing good Supplier Quality Management. In the case of products coming from Asia where the culture is different, there are serious language barriers, the quality consciousness are at different levels, and government regulations are poorly enforced if they even exist, sound Supplier Quality Management might be good old fashioned Incoming Inspection. While Incoming Inspection is indeed old fashioned, it is not necessarily good. There several reasons for this:

1. Incoming Inspection is costly. In the US, many companies have eliminated or severely cut back on this activity. Rather than filter out bad quality, the movement has been to select or develop suppliers that have sound repeatable Quality Management Systems and can certify the Quality of the goods they produce and ship. The onus is on the producing company not the customer company. It makes no economic sense to invest in human capital to detect and filter out poor quality AFTER it is produced and shipped. It is more economical to produce good Quality in the first place.

2. Incoming Inspection is not effective. Even 100% inspection is not effective. There are measurement errors inherent in any system that would allow defects to slip through. If sampling plans are used, as they should, to provide a reasonable filter at a lesser cost, the older Quality manuals speak about two kinds of risk. First is the Producer's Risk, this is the probability that a good lot will be rejected. Second is the Consumer's Risk that a bad lot or shipment will be accepted. These risks are inherent in Incoming Inspection and simply mean that bad product can be passed through.

3. If a lot or shipment is rejected, what is the disposition of the materials? If a lot of material from half way around the world is rejected, the customer company must decide what to do with the materials, components, or finished goods. Shipping it back half way around the globe i.e. rejecting and returning the goods is usually not economical. Thus the goods must be sorted, re-worked or disposed of again at considerable expense. If one does not have factories or warehouses, the problem of disposition is further complicated and even more costly.

There is a Quality principle called QCD (Quality, Cost, and Delivery) that emerged from the Japanese Quality movement. The basic idea is that consumers judge products on these three dimensions and make a purchasing decision. Quality can be elementary. Does the product work and do what it was intended to do in a reliable way? Quality could also refer to production innovation. Does the product provide a new feature or function that customers would value. Consider the innovation of the iPod over the Walkman that allowed consumers to carry all their music around with them all the time and never have to change a tape or disk.

The same applies to Delivery. It could be as simple as availability. Is the product on the shelf in the stores? For mail order or home delivery, it refers to the reliability and on-time delivery of the goods as promised. But on a more sophisticated level, it is how fast a company can churn out new innovative products thus defining and potentially owning the market.

Cost is the cost or purchase, the price of the product or service. For more complicated goods like machines, e.g. automobiles, Cost could be the cost of ownership or the life cycle cost of the item. This would include purchase price plus all maintenance, operational, and repair costs.
In terms of QCD, if two products are equal in two of the three dimensions, the one that outperforms the other in the third dimension should be the choice of rational consumers and eventually gain market leadership.

In out-sourcing and off-shoring of materials, components and finished goods, companies are looking to save money. They are trying either to gain an advantage if they are first to do so or simply to remain competitive in terms of C – Cost. The labor costs are very low in China, India and other countries. Industries are chasing low C labor around the world. As China becomes saturated and some say it is happening faster than we think, companies will chase low C labor to Vietnam, Africa and elsewhere.

The savings in C are not only in labor. It is surprising how little labor directly affects the cost of many goods. In mature consumer products with higher levels of automation, the labor component might only be 2-4% of the cost of goods. Savings of 50-90% in labor costs are very real but maybe not compelling enough. Additional savings in taxes and regulatory expenses, Environmental, Health, and Safety, over doing business in the highly regulated and taxed markets of North America and Europe may indeed tip the scale.

With savings in C comes trade-offs. The first and most obvious is in terms of D – Delivery Time. In out-sourcing something that was produced in North America to China, replenishment time to Distribution Centers or customer companies will jump from days/weeks to weeks/months. This trade-off is obvious and part of the sourcing calculations. It will take longer to ship the goods in and inventory will go up. The savings are still substantial enough to justify the decision.

Yet, the decisions are not often robust. With time, there are other transportation Costs that could affect the C – D balance. A study done justifying outsourcing based on a fuel cost of X might not be so advantageous at a fuel cost of 1.5-2.0 X. If the demand for transportation from Asia to North America changes the supply and demand balance to the favor of the ocean carriers, rates might substantially increase further eroding savings.

The trade-off that is often under the radar when the decision to out-source is made is Q – Quality. This could be Quality of the product or Quality of the service. Customer companies can easily and wrongly assume that the Quality culture and systems that they have with domestic suppliers, internal or external, will transfer off-shore if simply stipulated clearly in the contract.

This problem may not exist in the early stages of out-sourcing. But as the Supply and Demand equation tilts in favor of the Supply i.e. there is more demand than supply can keep up with, there is less incentive for the suppliers to build in and assure Quality. It comes down to the integrity of the management of these suppliers. When Demand outpaces Supply, there can be a tendency for unqualified, unscrupulous or dishonest parties to enter the business. Quality can suffer due to incompetence and dramatic growth in the case of the unqualified. It can become criminal in the hands of the unscrupulous and dishonest. The criminal compromise of Quality was no doubt in play in melamine laced wheat gluten that killed pets in North America and also in the substitution of diethylene glycol for glycerin in both toothpastes and medicines.

How do customer companies ensure Quality in their incoming materials, components and finished goods? It would be best if the tried and true methods of supplier development, management and certification could be employed. This would be the most economic solution as suppliers would have to demonstrate having a quality system and that they are able to manage to it. Quality would thus be built in at the source and goods would arrive certified and fit for use.

If this is not possible due to the supplier not being capable of such a level of management, older methods must be used implemented e.g. Incoming Inspection. This risk is on the customer companies. They have to manage it for the sake of their market share and to prevent lawsuits when the problems are so severe that safety and health are at risk.

Incoming Inspection requires the customer companies to dedicate resources to detect and determine the Quality level that is already built into the goods. Most companies in North America have minimized this function over the past twenty years. Thus, the additional cost is quite real and quite unexpected. It is further complicated by the reality that they may not even have the space in their plants or distribution centers (if indeed they still have any) for the level of inspection and subsequent sorting and rework that will be needed.

There might be a third party opportunity to provide this service in China, India or wherever to detect poor Quality and reject lots before it is shipped. But, if local companies are employed to do such there is still a risk. More and more companies are finding it necessary to place their own personal in the producing plants as co-plant managers or co-production/quality managers to ensure things are being done properly at the source. Placing full time employees from North America and Europe in the producing countries to manage inspection at the source of production would further erode the savings of the out-sourcing.

In the 1950s and 1960s, basically post World War II, there was a flurry of products coming from Japan. There was a standing joke about these imports. The joke was the Made in Japan equaled cheap, unreliable, and shoddy goods. At the time many of the goods deserved to be associated with bad quality. There was even an urban legend of a Japanese town being renamed Usa so goods exported from there could bear the MADE IN USA label. The fact is the town of Usa on the island Kyushu was named that long before WWII.

Certainly the story of the Quality ascendancy in Japan, led by the likes of Sony, Toyota, and Mitsubishi are very well documented. The same may well happen in China. Manufacturing companies will mature and the market will shift from the current glut of Demand to something more balanced between Supply and Demand. As a result, the competition between companies will naturally gravitate from a focus solely on C to QCD. Quality of product and service at the best Cost and Delivery will make the difference. There are already reports of from purchasing agents that rating manufacturing facilities by who is in it for the short haul profiteering vs. those investing in R & D and vertical integration.

The August 2007 issue of Business 2.0, a Time Inc. publication, has an article entitled Startup: Rwanda. It features American entrepreneurs investing in this civil war and genocide ravaged country. Now it appears, from the article, to be on the cutting edge of the low cost labor frontier for telecommunications and software.

It may only be a matter of time, and probably less time than most would estimate, before all the labor markets of the world are all engaged and tapped into. When this happens, competition will certainly move from a pure C focus to one of QCD.

As an example of how fast things can move, the writing of this article began because the melamine and diethylene glycol contamination stories were in the press. Since then, stories on Chinese Quality were everywhere in the media and waned before this article was finished.

Lastly, here is a Quality Methodology none of the Quality Guru’s like Deming, Juran, or Ishikawa ever advocated. On July 11, 2007, China executed Zheng Xiayou, 62. He was the head of China's Food and Drug Safety Administration from 1998 to 2005. He was executed for having taken bribes to the tune of $850,000 to approve drugs and products that were of poor Quality to being outright dangerous. People died in both China and Panama due to these tainted or ineffective drugs.

June 2007: Annual Health and Fitness Letter

June 6 - Attitude and Longevity: Dr. Becca Levy is a professor at the Yale School of Public Health. She recently completed a study which showed that people who had a positive attitude about aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those who were not so positive.

There seems to be a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy in how one views aging. If your view aging as a negative and use words like “fuddy-duddy, decrepit, sad, wrinkly, tired, stiff, brittle, unhappy, invisible, obsolete, diminished, fat, fragile, cranky or marginalized,” you tend to take on some or more of these traits. If your view of aging includes words like “wise, experienced, active, full of life,” the opposite is true.

The old adage is that “you are as old as you feel.” I truly believe that. I your age defines and limits your behavior, you will become less and less active, less and less alert. This adage goes hand in hand with another old adage, “Use it or lose it.”

A good attitude will have you using your mind and body to do things, to do things and to exercise both. A negative view of aging, can easily reduce you to becoming a couch potato, parked in front of the TV watching soap operas and game shows, allowing your body and mind to atrophy.

Of course, studies like those of Professor Levy, are not absolutes or guarantees. There are very few of those in this life. Rather there is a statistical correlation. We are talking probabilities not absolutes. There are plenty examples of people full of vim, vigor, a love of life, and with great attitudes that get cancer and die at the age of 40 or 50 something. Attitude is just one more thing people can do to slow the aging process and to maximize ones longevity. Other factors include, smoking, diet, and optimizing their blood chemistry i.e. cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.

My Uncle Rouben, the subject of my May 2004 letter, had a great attitude. He advocated taking care of ones self always saying “there is no greater blessing than good health, don’t take it for granted.” He ate well, exercised, did not smoke and drank moderately. He lived very well, he lived fully. He was an adherent of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking.

One day he had a stroke. He was upset because he had failed his driver’s test, really upset. That evening he had a stroke. His left side was essentially useless and his speech was slurred. Shortly after having the stroke, his positive attitude kicked in and he was certain that he would persevere and with the Power of Positive Thinking, he would gain movement in his paralyzed leg and arm and one day walk again. He truly believed and diligently did what the doctors asked him to do or try to do.

June 19: Attitude is important within ones physical reality. Christopher Reeve (1952-2004) played Superman. He was a gifted actor but excelled as a pianist, a pilot who flew two solo transatlantic flights. In the 1980’s he took to horseback riding and was quickly competing in equestrian jumping events. In 1995, he was thrown from his horse and suffered a severe spinal chord injury that left him paralyzed. He could have easily died from his spinal chord injury when he was thrown from his horse. Yet, he lived. In this condition, he made the best of what his reality was. With his new reality, he dedicated his life to raising awareness and money to find a cure or treatment to repair his spinal chord. The following quote summarizes his remarkable attitude.

What I do is based on powers we all have inside us; the ability to endure; the ability to love, to carry on, to make the best of what we have – and you don’t have to be a ‘Superman’ to do it.

Christopher Reeve lived many years past his severe injury. He did this with the assistance of his wife and, no doubt, supported by his wealth. Yet, I believe it was also his attitude.

People are probably pre-disposed to having a youthful attitude. You can see it in people from adolescence on. Of course, life’s trials and tribulations can certainly erode the attitude, if we let them.

The key is getting or having the right attitude. Even harder is maintaining it with all that happens in life. The curveballs such as debilitating disease can really bring one down.

We have heard the various adages. e.g. Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? When served lemons make lemonade. So, one always has a choice to take oneself positively and not feel limited by age or condition. Obviously Christopher Reeve could no longer act, ride horses, or pilot an airplane. Yet, given his debilitating condition he became a spokesman and leader for research in spinal chord injuries.

I never gave Christopher Reeve much regard before. Sure, I enjoyed his movies but that was about it. I felt bad when he was thrown from the horse and injured. I really did not pay that much attention to him except what I was subjected to in the papers and on television. Yet, when he died, I felt very bad and in reflecting on his life, was impressed with his courage and determination. I would have liked to see him walk again. I would have loved to have seen my Uncle Rouben walk again.

I have actually mixed two concepts: the attitude towards aging and the power of positive thinking. But, I believe they overlap so much they are really the same thing. There is a low probability of finding someone who had a positive attitude in general but a horrible view of aging.

All in all, Dr. Levy simply confirmed: you are as old as you feel.

June 23 - Cycling: I went for a fifty mile bike ride today. I never was more than seven miles from home. The Chicago area is well known for its bike trails, often abandoned rail beds or, in the case near me, next to existing tracks. The two near me are the Skokie Valley Trail which is 8 miles long and the Robert McClory (a long standing congressman in the area, now deceased) Trail that actually runs from Chicago to Kenosha, WI. I rode the Skokie Valley trail this today. I basically did three laps, 48 miles, adding 4 more miles for the getting to and from the trail from home. It took three and half hours with a stop for coffee and to refill my water bottle.

Biking around here is different than biking in Connecticut in one specific way. It is much flatter here. It was pretty hilly in CT and could get very exhausting in climbing the hills. When I first moved here the folks in Kiddle’s bike shop in Lake Forest told me, “The wind is your hills here.” To a degree that is true. There is certainly resistance when riding into the wind. The difference going with the wind and against it can be 2-4 mph! That is a 10-25% differential. But it is no hill. There were hills in Connecticut where I swear I could have walked up faster than I pedaled. I could be cruising at 14-17 mph, hit the hill, and grunt, groan, and struggle for the next mile at like 4-6 mph. That differential is more like 60-70%. I would have to ride into a hurricane to experience that kind of wind hill.

Today, I rode my newest bike. In April, I bought a vintage fixed gear. It is vintage because the bike is built on a 1970s Nishiki steel lugged frame. Nishiki is or was a respected Japanese bicycle manufacturer. They also sold bikes under the Panasonic name and in their day were considered a serious player in the world of road or racing bikes. The frame is grey and teal with the patina of age. It has some urban grunge or messenger bike chic to it. I have kept it basic, no computer, no saddlebag, and no add-ons of any kind except a water bottle cage. When I ride it, I just throw a cell phone in my jersey pocket, just in case. As I like to keep a log of my miles, I go on routes where I know the mileage.

It is fixed gear. That means there is only one gear and it is fixed. Fixed means you cannot coast on the bike. If the rear wheel is turning the pedals are turning. It is like a circus bike, one could ride it backwards if so inclined and so skilled. I am certainly inclined but, alas, lack the skill to go backwards. When you see a messenger in New York rock his bike back and forth at a stop light without having to put a foot on the pavement, he has a fixed gear bike. You can see photos of my bike on www.fixedgeargallery.com/2007/may/b/MarkGavoor.htm. Fixed Gear Gallery a wonderful site dedicated only to fixed gear bikes. Anyone who has one can post photos of their bike with a brief commentary. There are a fair number of Nishiki’s on the website.

June 30 – More Biking: It was a simply gorgeous day today. It was a perfect biking day. The sky was totally blue and completely cloudless. The temperature was in the 70’s.
I went out at 7:30 am with my neighbor and long time friend, Ken Hachikian. We did a twenty mile loop. It was probably only 60 degrees at that time. I rode a hybrid bike and we logged the 20 miles at 14.2 mph. We were passed by a few folks on road bikes.

When I got home, I made some espresso and relaxed for a half an hour. Then I switched bikes and went out for another ride on my road bike. I wanted to do another thirty and log the third fifty mile day this month. I ended up getting to fifty in another two hours. But, I was ten miles from home. OK… may as well do a metric century, 100 km or 62-63 miles. I ended up at 64.
This put me at 1,056 outdoor miles for 2007 and on pace for another 2,000 mile year. Last year I logged 2,300. With the new job and all, I did not think I would be able to match last year’s mark which was facilitated by not working so many long hours after Colgate launched the Voluntary Early Retirement Program back in May 2006.

June 24 - Diet: I have maintained my vegetarian low fat diet for a year and a half now. It has worked well for me. I eat lots of food and never really feel hungry. My blood pressure has been good, when I get a chance to check it. I am due to check my cholesterol. That will be done as soon as I find a doctor out here.

As I wrote last year, dieting never worked for me. It really is a low probability of success strategy for most folks. It involves going too hungry for too long. This creates the tension that when the diet is relaxed results in that slingshot effect of gaining back all the weight one lost and more. Most of the dietary pundits advocate changing ones lifestyle to permanently lose weight. I feel like I have changed my lifestyle.

Now what I have done is not for everyone. Many people ask me if I miss eating meat or having the occasional drink or six. I really do not. I like the food I eat. Dr. Dean Ornish was absolutely correct when he said that the subtle taste of vegetables and fruits would take the place of foods one gave up. Fruit has never tasted so good. I have eaten more oatmeal, tofu, hummus, tabouli, dried fruit, baked potatoes, whole wheat pasta, and grilled veggies then ever.

OK… there is that every now and then when someone is grilling shish kebob or some other spiced meat. The smell of that can be intoxicating but it soon passes. Others ask if I miss having the drink. Again, I thought I would but actually I am having better conversations in social settings than when boozed up. Some say I am a bit boring and perhaps showing my age. But, I reject that because… I am as old as I feel. As far as this goes, I feel pretty young.

I probably should have given up caffeine too. But I have not. I really like coffee and still drink three to six cups a day. I am a good customer of Starbucks but not as much as when I was in New York City and there was one on every corner. I drink either espresso or regular coffee with fake sugar and skim milk. Every once in a while, I will have a latte with sugar free vanilla syrup and skim milk.

Here is the really odd thing. I still smoke cigars. I enjoy them and consume one or two a week on average. It is hard to smoke much with all the restrictions in restaurants and other indoors venues. A colleague recently introduced me as the “cigar smoking vegetarian.” It is pretty funny when you think of it.

Weight loss has really slowed down. I lost weight quickly through October of last year and really have stabilized. I would like to lose another pant size or two. I guess in order to do that I probably have to cut back on volume, on calories.