The ancient law of unintended consequences is not really new, but it's never been more active than today. Just ask John McCain and Sarah Palin...!
According to this law, once X happens, you can never tell how Y, Z and everything else might follow. In Genesis, X is the appeal of that darn apple...to the Greeks in the Trojan War, it was the beauty of that darn Helen....to the Brits back in 1775, it was that darn Tea Tax on their American colonies....and to the Cub fans, it's been that darn goat they wouldn't let into the park.
Now here come two ironic new ones: (1) John McCain very unintentionally creates Sarah Palin, which might turn out to be the only thing his illustrious life will ever be remembered for (2) Sarah Palin very unintentionally becomes the new litmus test of American politics, because instead of voters being divided over abortion now it may be over Palin.
So I ask the SunTimes -- can you find any laws on the books with intentioned-consequences any more amazing than these unwritten laws of unintended-consequences? Makes you think, maybe life's neither a journey nor a joy. Just a great big casino....
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
REBOTTING YESTERDAY IN TIME FOR TOMOORROW
It's not news to report on the latest widget or website -- our world is exploding with them. But you took the time to sneak in a little explosion that might just have some large consequences (July 4, page 20)...!
At least half your readers have heard of the Saturday Evening Post. The other half are in for a surprise. As you reported -- it's back!
The charming old magazine started by Benjamin Franklin almost 240 years ago featured folksy art, fiction, commentary and health articles. Including those classic front covers by Norman Rockwell and his take on America.
Speaking for both halves of your readership, hats off to you for taking the time to slow the time down with this timely item. In a time when we have billions of cell phones, millions of websites, and thousands of digital & print publications dedicated to hurrying up...this magazine revival may test whether there's still time to slow down.
At least half your readers have heard of the Saturday Evening Post. The other half are in for a surprise. As you reported -- it's back!
The charming old magazine started by Benjamin Franklin almost 240 years ago featured folksy art, fiction, commentary and health articles. Including those classic front covers by Norman Rockwell and his take on America.
Speaking for both halves of your readership, hats off to you for taking the time to slow the time down with this timely item. In a time when we have billions of cell phones, millions of websites, and thousands of digital & print publications dedicated to hurrying up...this magazine revival may test whether there's still time to slow down.
Friday, July 3, 2009
BIKES AND BATMOBILES
The July 3 front pages are a powerful statement about the current drift of our world. They featured the role of the old-time bike in contrast to the new-age Batmobile. A nifty metaphor for the value of experienced humans in contrast to exotic technology...!
A couple of Chicago paramedics on bikes helped save the life of a woman who collapsed at the Taste of Chicago. True, they were packing some technology with them, but what saved her was compassionate human intervention more than any hardware. Which is something people need to remember when we're being told -- and seem to believe -- "there's a machine for that!"
Keep the machines, god bless them, but lets not stop being human in favor of being bionic. Lets remember it's still humans who save lives, prevent accidents, teach knowledge, achieve victories and change the world. Not hardware.
Every time the lights go out, or O'Hare gets shut down, or markets jam, or the Internet goes black, it's always a person not a tool that's needed to get our world moving again. So hats off to all the guys on bikes, more than the ones on Batmobiles!
A couple of Chicago paramedics on bikes helped save the life of a woman who collapsed at the Taste of Chicago. True, they were packing some technology with them, but what saved her was compassionate human intervention more than any hardware. Which is something people need to remember when we're being told -- and seem to believe -- "there's a machine for that!"
Keep the machines, god bless them, but lets not stop being human in favor of being bionic. Lets remember it's still humans who save lives, prevent accidents, teach knowledge, achieve victories and change the world. Not hardware.
Every time the lights go out, or O'Hare gets shut down, or markets jam, or the Internet goes black, it's always a person not a tool that's needed to get our world moving again. So hats off to all the guys on bikes, more than the ones on Batmobiles!
THE SECRET TO YOUR NEXT REUNION
Singer Pearl Bailey had this sassy smart saying: "There's a way to handle the regrets of your past. Don't hide from them. Just so long as you don't repeat them, your past will never catch up with you....!"
A no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip hunk of advice for that next school reunion. Right, the one you've been dreading. Hey, we all do in a way. I mean, how many can come back to their Park Ridge high school here and be Hillary Clinton? How many can return and be Harrison Ford? Yep, two Park Ridgeans who made it pretty big. Just like you're thinking all those other slick class presidents and hot cheerleaders have done too.
But here's a little secret from someone who has, to date, clocked 11of these bitter-sweet soirees. Just remember, you're looking at their outside from your inside. Think about that as you're reluctantly getting ready for the big night. What you're seeing is what they want you to see...what you're feeling is what you're allowing yourself to feel.
Maybe you're feeling some of the old hurts, embarrassments, defeats, rejections, whatever. But here's the secret -- those feelings are like old Marley's chains in A Christmas Carol. Dump 'em now! If you're going to play an old movie in your head tonight, try It's A Wonderful Night instead. Remember, that's the one where George Bailey learns this remarkable secret. The world wouldn't quite be what it is today were it not for you being in it! Yes, small little you and all those little things you've said and done along the way that you never even realized!
OK, that's some class-reunion advice from someone in town who's got this thing down pat. Just don't take as long to learn the secret as I did ...
A no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip hunk of advice for that next school reunion. Right, the one you've been dreading. Hey, we all do in a way. I mean, how many can come back to their Park Ridge high school here and be Hillary Clinton? How many can return and be Harrison Ford? Yep, two Park Ridgeans who made it pretty big. Just like you're thinking all those other slick class presidents and hot cheerleaders have done too.
But here's a little secret from someone who has, to date, clocked 11of these bitter-sweet soirees. Just remember, you're looking at their outside from your inside. Think about that as you're reluctantly getting ready for the big night. What you're seeing is what they want you to see...what you're feeling is what you're allowing yourself to feel.
Maybe you're feeling some of the old hurts, embarrassments, defeats, rejections, whatever. But here's the secret -- those feelings are like old Marley's chains in A Christmas Carol. Dump 'em now! If you're going to play an old movie in your head tonight, try It's A Wonderful Night instead. Remember, that's the one where George Bailey learns this remarkable secret. The world wouldn't quite be what it is today were it not for you being in it! Yes, small little you and all those little things you've said and done along the way that you never even realized!
OK, that's some class-reunion advice from someone in town who's got this thing down pat. Just don't take as long to learn the secret as I did ...
Thursday, July 2, 2009
WHAT'S A MIRACLE....?
A 14-year-old clings for hours in an ocean which has just swallowed up 152 lives from her crashed plane (Sun Times, July 2). They die, she lives, the media call it a miracle. But how to define that word....?
Science calls miracles as-yet-unexplainable phenomena. Statisticians call them beating-the-odds. Theologians call them extraordinary interventions. Atheists and agnostics call them luck.
Here's what some of us call them -- reminders! They are those totally incalculable split-seconds in the life of our world when something occurs beyond all possible means of reasoning. And so they lodge forever inside our hearts like a time-clock. If we ever we say "impossible" again, we can now remember the word has no firm place in the lexicon of life.
Think about that the next time you're bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles....!
Science calls miracles as-yet-unexplainable phenomena. Statisticians call them beating-the-odds. Theologians call them extraordinary interventions. Atheists and agnostics call them luck.
Here's what some of us call them -- reminders! They are those totally incalculable split-seconds in the life of our world when something occurs beyond all possible means of reasoning. And so they lodge forever inside our hearts like a time-clock. If we ever we say "impossible" again, we can now remember the word has no firm place in the lexicon of life.
Think about that the next time you're bobbing alone in your ocean of troubles....!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
And so another new beginning to our lives. The beginning of the second half of 2009. What waits for us up ahead? As members of our family, as citizens of our nation, as members of the world community....?
The distance between our mornings and those mountains of achievement we dream about may be longer than we'd like. Or perhaps shorter than we think. Either way, there's really only two ways to travel them....
....either we get through them, or we go through them!
Subtle but stunning distinction here. Getting through is the conventional slugging your way down the crooked miles; going through means a large lusty squeeze of every piece of every day. Now who among us can really do that? Well, saints and poets maybe. But the rest of us -- from president to pawnbroker -- can at least try.
Consider the daily sights, sounds, smells and stars that loom just up ahead.
The sight of another crimson dawn seeping across the green of our world...the landscape of morning joggers and delivery-truck drivers....the vision of beautiful women with long hair snapping in the breeze....the portrait of brief-cased ambitions stepping briskly into commuter trains....the broad-shoulders of bulky men sweating as they go about the job of keeping a city alive....the skyline of soaring buildings stretching their glass and concrete as if trying to reach heaven.
Also the everyday sounds out there. Too rich and resonant to simply get through, you have to go through them. Honestly, who's too busy -- president or pawnbroker -- to pause at least a moment over the rhapsodies of the starlings and sparrows...the credenzas of the breezes strumming the trees...the buzz of lawnmowers manicuring our plots of the earth....the roar of jets sending and bringing back aisles of big deals and even bigger dreams....and, not to be forgotten, the sounds of puppies yapping and kids yelping at the break of another succulent summer day.
And oh the smells. Fragrances, really, if you take the time. The bouquet of fresh-brewed coffee...the perfume of fresh-mowed lawns...the tang of blooming gladiolas and peonies....say and what about the exhaust fumes of fat shipping trucks and clanging garbage haulers, for even the sounds of dissonance help make the symphony all the richer and more complex.
Now as for the stars -- well, there are more than the ones which wink during the night. This next half of 2009 has a storehouse of less tangible stars waiting for us. If only we take the time to feel their light. Just getting through another six months won't do. It won't do at all! Each of us -- presidents to pawnbrokers -- can't fully function without the magnets of a few future new possibilities in our lives. Maybe a new career, a new child, a new home, a new contract, a new law, some new victory little or large that shines there just beyond our usual reach.
Sure, we can get through our life without stars. But to really go through our life demands constellations of hopes and dreams that make the trip worth the time. And this half of the year seems as good a time as any.
The distance between our mornings and those mountains of achievement we dream about may be longer than we'd like. Or perhaps shorter than we think. Either way, there's really only two ways to travel them....
....either we get through them, or we go through them!
Subtle but stunning distinction here. Getting through is the conventional slugging your way down the crooked miles; going through means a large lusty squeeze of every piece of every day. Now who among us can really do that? Well, saints and poets maybe. But the rest of us -- from president to pawnbroker -- can at least try.
Consider the daily sights, sounds, smells and stars that loom just up ahead.
The sight of another crimson dawn seeping across the green of our world...the landscape of morning joggers and delivery-truck drivers....the vision of beautiful women with long hair snapping in the breeze....the portrait of brief-cased ambitions stepping briskly into commuter trains....the broad-shoulders of bulky men sweating as they go about the job of keeping a city alive....the skyline of soaring buildings stretching their glass and concrete as if trying to reach heaven.
Also the everyday sounds out there. Too rich and resonant to simply get through, you have to go through them. Honestly, who's too busy -- president or pawnbroker -- to pause at least a moment over the rhapsodies of the starlings and sparrows...the credenzas of the breezes strumming the trees...the buzz of lawnmowers manicuring our plots of the earth....the roar of jets sending and bringing back aisles of big deals and even bigger dreams....and, not to be forgotten, the sounds of puppies yapping and kids yelping at the break of another succulent summer day.
And oh the smells. Fragrances, really, if you take the time. The bouquet of fresh-brewed coffee...the perfume of fresh-mowed lawns...the tang of blooming gladiolas and peonies....say and what about the exhaust fumes of fat shipping trucks and clanging garbage haulers, for even the sounds of dissonance help make the symphony all the richer and more complex.
Now as for the stars -- well, there are more than the ones which wink during the night. This next half of 2009 has a storehouse of less tangible stars waiting for us. If only we take the time to feel their light. Just getting through another six months won't do. It won't do at all! Each of us -- presidents to pawnbrokers -- can't fully function without the magnets of a few future new possibilities in our lives. Maybe a new career, a new child, a new home, a new contract, a new law, some new victory little or large that shines there just beyond our usual reach.
Sure, we can get through our life without stars. But to really go through our life demands constellations of hopes and dreams that make the trip worth the time. And this half of the year seems as good a time as any.
WHAT'S THE VALUE OF VALUE?
The Cook County Assessor's Office announced real estate values here have dropped to historic lows. Here's a question for the Assessor: You're the expert, so what's a workable formula for figuring the other values in these homes...?
I doubt crunching your numbers will ever get a grip on the value of the joys and memories which live in those houses. Or the value of the different marriages and families that flourished under these roofs. Or the value of the teaching and tears and chocolate chip cookies that took place in those rooms.
Or, say, what about the value of the education which saved paychecks paid for, or the holiday dinners and anniversary parties that once filled the air in there, or the tense nights spent awake with a sick child, or the jubilant mornings sharing the start of a new adventure?
Mr. Houlihan -- your work is limited to numbers, and we all understand that. But sometimes don't you look up from your cool antiseptic numbers, and wonder about the many lives and loves and legacies which took place inside those walls? I'll bet you do, and I'll bet it reminds you everytime that we'll never be able to fit the scope of our humanity into the size of a calculator!
I doubt crunching your numbers will ever get a grip on the value of the joys and memories which live in those houses. Or the value of the different marriages and families that flourished under these roofs. Or the value of the teaching and tears and chocolate chip cookies that took place in those rooms.
Or, say, what about the value of the education which saved paychecks paid for, or the holiday dinners and anniversary parties that once filled the air in there, or the tense nights spent awake with a sick child, or the jubilant mornings sharing the start of a new adventure?
Mr. Houlihan -- your work is limited to numbers, and we all understand that. But sometimes don't you look up from your cool antiseptic numbers, and wonder about the many lives and loves and legacies which took place inside those walls? I'll bet you do, and I'll bet it reminds you everytime that we'll never be able to fit the scope of our humanity into the size of a calculator!
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