Recently, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was on a flight bound for Detroit Metro airport when he ignited his underpants in an attempt to blow up an aircraft, and ultimately only melted his own pee-pee. More on that later.
Every middle child has experienced the time when an older sibling was given an opportunity and botched it for whatever reason. The parental response was “Well, your brother/sister screwed that up, so now you will never get that chance.” Not the worst idea perhaps, but a little like shutting the gate after the horses have escaped.
To that end, everything that Umar did to get away with his terrorist attempt is now illegal for EVERYONE! You cannot pee, you cannot touch the overhead, you cannot move or converse with other passengers, you cannot have a pillow or blanket, and above all else, you cannot store explosives in your underpants (that part is a good idea). I pity the flight attendant that has to tell the pregnant woman she has to “hold it” for the last hour of flight. Will the airlines now offer complimentary peanuts and Depends?
The point is that when new rules are put in place, everyone knows what they are, and it only serves as fodder for the terrorists to figure out a workaround. The focus should be on the pre-emptive part.
Finally, given the botched efforts of Richard Reed (failed foot bomber…and no relation), and more recently Umar, there seems to be a serious quality control issue with these terrorist groups. I am not in any way trying to trivialize these events, but I believe I may have a solution.
If global governments required terrorist groups to qualify for ISO certification, on one hand, quality control would improve, but also those organizations would be required [by ISO] to document for public record all of their processes and procedures which in turn would give the intelligence community better information to track and thwart activity in advance.
I’m just saying!
A Decade(s) in Review…Or Not
Like a gazillion other folks, I thought I might recap the first decade of the new millennium, but I changed my mind and decided to recap my view [in age perspective] of the six (6) decades I have existed in. I thought about that time span, and related it to how I thought as a child about age. I was born smack in the middle of the 20th century, and here I am at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. When I was a child I thought about history, the 19th century and the people who spanned that time frame and influenced me. People born in the mid to late 19th century who greatly influenced the 20th century…Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Sigmund Freud, William G. Reed and Debra Webster…who? My grandparents!
When I was born, Dwight Eisenhower was President of the US, Louis St. Laurent was the Prime Minister of Canada. Yah, I lived a divided life and kept track. I grew up on and around farms in rural Ontario Canada and lived the life of Opie Taylor [look it up]. Bare foot all summer, fishing in the creek, catching crayfish, turtles, snakes and oh yes, fish; tending livestock, milking cows, feeding the pigs and chickens, bringing in the crops, building forts in the hay-mow in summer, and ice forts in the winter. As children, we used to bring our trophies in to Grandma, and ask if we could keep them; snakes, turtles, crayfish. Grandma would say “If it can’t sit up at the table and feed itself, get it out of the house." I can’t tell you how much time I spent trying to teach snakes and turtles to sit up and use a fork and knife…apparently they are slow learners.
The 50’s. As long as we followed some simple rules, we owned the world! It really was a simpler time, but now I realize that had a lot to do with the space my parents gave us to discover and learn.
The 60’s were a different story. We, as a family started spending more time in the city, and it was a much different life. We had swamp barely 2 blocks away. It was great! We caught snakes and turtles and pollywogs and brought them home to keep and raise. I will advance ahead and then digress (as I am so capable of). Sometime in the mid sixties, the city decided to tear down a perfectly good swamp to build [of all things] a new school. ARE YOU KIDDING? Yah, that’s what I said. Who buries a perfectly good swamp to build a school? Between the EPA, and the state DNR, considering natural wetlands…that would be illegal today. I got back to the farm and Grandparents as much as I was allowed. They would never allow a school to be built on a swamp.
On November 22, 1963 I was sitting in class at school (not the swamp school) and our teacher was called out of the room. When she returned she told us that there had been an accident and the president had been hurt. We were to go home and be with our parents. When I got home, Mom and Dad were still at work. We had a housekeeper – Thelma. When I walked in the house the radio and television were both on, and Thelma was sitting at the kitchen table crying. I walked into the living room and the instant I sat down Walter Cronkite said “It is official. The President was pronounced dead at 1:00PM Central Time. Nothing made sense. How could anyone shoot the president? Over the next several days I realized the power and potential of live television. I saw Ruby shoot Oswald, and saw every detail of the funeral. The world changed in a very profound way for me that week.
On a Sunday evening in February 1964 I lay down on the living room floor and watched a musical group perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. They had long hair, their music was loud, and all the girls in the audience were screaming. They were called “The Beatles”. I remember wondering to myself what President Kennedy might think of them.
The balance of that decade was spent in an odd combination of farm life and the big city. The big city offered a seemingly endless string of assassinations (Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy) contrasted by working on farms in a town that has only had 2 murders in its 175 year history.
On a summer evening in July of 1969 we had finished the chores for the day a bit early. My boss, Mr. Scott was excited and said everything else could wait; we had to get in the parlor and watch the TV. We all sat together and watched the first man set foot on the moon. How cool is that? Later I went out and lay in the grass in the side-yard staring at the moon and wondered what the astronauts were doing then.
By now, the war in Vietnam had escalated to a very dark point in our history and the nation was truly divided in dangerous ways where nothing really good could come from it. On one side we were sending troops [via military draft] to war, and on the other side, there were protests that ultimately became violent either by the protesters, or by the reaction from law enforcement. It was a confusing time. My brother volunteered for the Navy and did 2 tours in Vietnam. I actively protested the war, but at the same time worried for my brother’s safety. There were people who volunteered for service, but by in large they were drafted and to me the choices were much like “Quit or get fired”; not a choice at all.
The 70’s rolled in. The Beatles had broken up after producing Abbey Road, in the first election where I was old enough to vote, Richard Nixon was elected to a second term on the platform of ending the Vietnam conflict. Ironically, while publicly speaking to ending the conflict, President Nixon expanded operations and invaded Cambodia and Laos. The draft was called off in mid-1972, and as another irony in 1974 when the US officially pulled out of Vietnam, President Nixon resigned facing impeachment and possible criminal charges.
Gerald Ford took over as president, the US experienced its first oil crisis, and the economy headed into the tank—oh boy! I don’t think many people think about this but the global market was in its infancy in the 70s. US automakers were building gas hog gun boat cars that were poorly built rust buckets. Datson, whose first attempt to enter the US market in the 50s which ended in acres of unsold vehicle rusting on the docks, re-entered the US market with well built affordable fuel efficient vehicles—and they sold! It took the US auto companies another decade to embrace the notion of quality and efficiency. I chuckle at the notion the “Global Market” is such a popular buzz term today—what cave were we living in?
The 70s wrapped up with the economy still not well, Jimmy Carter was president, and 70 people were being held hostage in Iran; a saga that lasted 444 days.
The 80s…where do I start? My son Justin was born, and I was inches away from him when he popped out and took over the world!
A “B” actor from California ran for president and won!?! I am deliberately staying politically neutral for this post, so I will simply say that Mr. Regan spent 8 years in office, followed by 4 years as president by his Vice President George Bush. I will say that a real high point in US history was when our president ordered the invasion of a tiny island in the Caribbean between Puerto Rico and Venezuela called Granada. The full might of the Navy and Marines converged on an island so small nearly 20% of it is airport. The entire island is barely ½ the size of Metro Chicago. Boy, we showed them! The premise of the attack was to overt a Communist takeover. 25% of the population on the island was US students, and we all know that the liberal elite are really just closet Commies. Oh yah, all 70 of the hostages were released from Iran.
We saw the “fall” of the Russian Empire. Mr. Regan had no problem taking full credit for this event, but in fact if there were western influence in this event; it was “economic downsizing”. Many of the minor countries in the empire had become financial burdens, and to right itself, the political and military minds of the empire decided to cut them loose. Many of these political and military officials were later discovered to have augmented their personal incomes with drug trafficking, prostitution, smuggling, money laundering, etc. Ah yes, the western influence of free market enterprise definitely caused the fall of Communism. Jumping ahead, today in the US, our biggest debtor is China to the tune of nearly 800 billion dollars. China; a Communist country…hmmm.
That aside, I really believe on a personal level that I hit my stride in the 80s. A successful career in marketing consulting and advertising design, a great relationship with my son, producing and directing theater, and a very satisfying time volunteering as a consultant and instructor in art therapy for a school created for the benefit of special needs children and adults. As for the culture of the 80s…big hair bands and Disco…not my cup of tea. I firmly entrenched myself in classical and traditional jazz, and I’m ok with all of it.
Enter the 90s. I met, fell in love with and married Mariann. A brilliant person who was in process of achieving her PhD in psychology and a VERY stubborn Hungarian who became my best friend and the love of my life. I can honestly say that there was never a boring moment with Mariann. We were both a little older, a bit set in our ways, and when we figured out the balance, we were a well oiled machine that no one could stop. Mariann graduated in 1996 with honors and a PhD. She started a private practice that was immediately successful with a patient load almost twice as large as normal. I was [am] so proud of her.
I have come to realize that this post is long, and hopefully somewhat interesting, but it is difficult to chronicle 6 decades only if because there are so many things that happened that will not be addressed.
On New Year’s Eve 1999, I had just come off of a 36 hour shift of Y2K transition for the company I was working for at the time, and Mariann and I had tickets to a Red Wings hockey game. The tickets included pretty nice seats to the game, and a buffet dinner in the private club at Joe Louis Arena afterwards with a chance to meet the team members. Mariann decided that her attire for the evening was going to be her “Federov” hockey sweater, jeans, and running shoes. I suggested that the dinner was going to be a more formal event and maybe she wanted to re-think her attire. Mariann’s response, “I’m not wearing heals to a freaking hockey game…it’s just wrong…screw ‘em!”. When the coach of the Red Wings showed up on the bench in a tux…it wasn’t a good sign. I had worn slacks, a dress shirt and a sweater [a compromise], but in fact there were evening gowns, heals and tuxes everywhere. Oddly enough during the game, the same amount of fan enthusiasm, beer spilling, and general crowd violence was about the same. We observed a woman heading for the concessions who caught a heal on the stairs and nearly fell. Mariann’s response, “See, I told you!”. Later that evening during the dinner, Steve Eiserman [the captain of the Red Wings] approached Mariann and smiled at her sweater saying, “Now that is a true fan…and a smart dresser.” Enough said.
I will back up just a moment to point out that Bill Clinton was our president for 8 years during the 90s. All I will say about that is that for all of the potential and promise that was possible for us, Mr. Clinton wasted an opportunity simply because he couldn’t keep his pee-pee in check, and congress wasted 4 years we will never get back by believing that they had nothing better to do than to focus on the president’s penis and ignore the other more mundane issues of the nation.
The new millennium! What a ride it has been. Y2K came and went without incident…and I am ambivalent about it. If in fact all of the scares of the new millennium had come to pass, perhaps we would have a chance to start over and get it right this time.
Early in the new decade and I don’t need to remind anyone…everyone knows where they were and what they were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was horrible, and we are all changed forever because of it.
Politically speaking, we had another Bush in office for 8 years, and now Barack Obama is the president. As for Bush 43…okay, that’s enough. The problem with our government for this decade is that regardless of which side you take, that fact is, they have either done nothing, or done very little, and did it very badly.
On a personal level, I am not happy with the decade. In barely the span of 4 years, I lost Mariann to pancreatic cancer, my father, father-in-law, a dear niece, and my brother. It has not been easy. I am sure that there are some positive and notable things that have happened at least in the past 5 years, but I have not noticed because I was too busy taking care of my family.
What I have noticed about the first decade of the new millennium is the obsession with “Reality” TV, technology to the point of distraction [Twitter, Face Book, this blog…] the 24 hour news stream that has to make stories up to fill the day and spends far more time on conjecture than fact. It also bothers me that we seem to have replaced decency and respect with a sense of entitlement and familiarity. I hear President Obama referred to as “Obama” or “Barack”, far more than I hear “President Obama” or “Mr. President”. I was always taught that even if you don’t respect the man, you respect the office.
To that end, and the end of this entry, this year for Christmas as every year, Justin gave me a gag gift. I always love his gifts because he knows I will laugh and see the irony of whatever it is. I had a conversation with Justin several weeks ago where I expressed my dismay with the lack of respect that President Obama seems to get, and how so many people are capitalizing on the historic significance of his being elected. Justin gave me a President Obama Chia Pet! Somehow, it just seems wrong...afterall you have to soak his head under water for an hour before applying the seeds. It may well be an appropriate end to an inappropriate decade.I am cautiously optimistic that we will bring sound minds and practical thought to the next decade and make it worthy of historic remembrance.
Oh Brother Where Art Thou?
The summer afternoons sometimes were breezeless and so stagnant that the sun would hang on a vaporous film of haze, such that the Cicadas would scream in pain for the want of shade. This did not stop us! With the salty sweet sweat of summer running off of us we, as children would clamber at the chance to help bring in the first cut of hay.
Jim and I were very different. He saw bringing in the hay as a responsibility with objectives and goals. I saw it as a chance to be in the sun, throw bails around, and get dirty without getting in trouble. The payoff of brining in a day’s worth of hay was to get to bathe in the river, and eat all the butterscotch ice cream you could stand for dessert at supper time.
Such is the kind of person Jim was. Purposeful, focused and hard working but never short of a pun, practical joke or the ability to laugh at himself.
When we were young, pre-teen, we were involved in little league baseball. I was involved because I was taught to believe that it was un-American to not like baseball, and as kids it was our responsibility to participate, not unlike obligatory service to the military. Don’t get me wrong. I could run fast, catch most any ball hit to me, and field with the best of anyone on my team…I simply didn’t care. Jim on the other hand played baseball and loved it because he was good…very good at it. He could pitch a scary fastball, run like the wind, and was in fact the home run king of our town. Yep, he could slam the ball at will, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.
I went to a game with Dad to see Jim play, and after hitting 2 home runs in 2 innings, the pitcher [coach] decided to throw Jim a walk. There were 2 outs, one man on base, they were one run down and the kid on deck was a whiffer. One, two pitches lobbed 3 feet wide of the plate. I saw a look on Jim’s face. He was angry…”Strike me out, but don’t wimp out!” On the third pitch, Jim leapt across the plate, leaned into the ball…and cracked it over the fence. When he crossed home plate, he looked at the opposing coach and simply smiled and tipped his hat.
That is Jim.
There are hundreds of stories that I could and will likely tell, and thousands of hours of my brother’s life that I did not spend next to him. There was a time when I idealized him as a big brother. There were times when I despised him as a pain in the ass, and there was the time when we came together and I loved him as a brother…in the end, he is my brother and I love him.
Jim and I were very different. He saw bringing in the hay as a responsibility with objectives and goals. I saw it as a chance to be in the sun, throw bails around, and get dirty without getting in trouble. The payoff of brining in a day’s worth of hay was to get to bathe in the river, and eat all the butterscotch ice cream you could stand for dessert at supper time.
Such is the kind of person Jim was. Purposeful, focused and hard working but never short of a pun, practical joke or the ability to laugh at himself.
When we were young, pre-teen, we were involved in little league baseball. I was involved because I was taught to believe that it was un-American to not like baseball, and as kids it was our responsibility to participate, not unlike obligatory service to the military. Don’t get me wrong. I could run fast, catch most any ball hit to me, and field with the best of anyone on my team…I simply didn’t care. Jim on the other hand played baseball and loved it because he was good…very good at it. He could pitch a scary fastball, run like the wind, and was in fact the home run king of our town. Yep, he could slam the ball at will, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.
I went to a game with Dad to see Jim play, and after hitting 2 home runs in 2 innings, the pitcher [coach] decided to throw Jim a walk. There were 2 outs, one man on base, they were one run down and the kid on deck was a whiffer. One, two pitches lobbed 3 feet wide of the plate. I saw a look on Jim’s face. He was angry…”Strike me out, but don’t wimp out!” On the third pitch, Jim leapt across the plate, leaned into the ball…and cracked it over the fence. When he crossed home plate, he looked at the opposing coach and simply smiled and tipped his hat.
That is Jim.
There are hundreds of stories that I could and will likely tell, and thousands of hours of my brother’s life that I did not spend next to him. There was a time when I idealized him as a big brother. There were times when I despised him as a pain in the ass, and there was the time when we came together and I loved him as a brother…in the end, he is my brother and I love him.
