This morning, Charlie and Sallie were in a singing mood, so I grabbed my harmonica and Flip camera and recorded them singing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” It is a little off-key, the harmonica isn’t as great as it could be as I was playing with one hand and trying really hard not to laugh.

I hope you enjoy their inaugural performance! (Sallie starts in about :54)

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For years I have reluctantly taken bags and bushels of over-produced tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, corn, gourds, and various melons and assorted garden by-products from my neighbors and friends who happily planted a garden in the early Spring — albeit without a plan — all giddy with the thoughts of fresh vegetables at their table. I took their bags of vegetables and assorted garden crap party out of guilt, partly to be nice but mostly to get them to stop talking about how wonderful their gardens were and how they didn’t expect so much stuff (apparently gardeners forget about last year’s harvest.)

Not anymore. I’m done. Go peddle your fibrous crap to someone else.

Why the change of heart you ask? Well, to be entirely honest, I never really wanted any of that stuff. Most of it ended up in the back compost heap anyway after sitting on my counter for a week, getting in the way of everything. But this year, a few tomatoes rolled out of a bag and under a workbench in my garage. After a week in 90 degree heat and a stressful hunt for “what the hell died in here,” I discovered the mess. I have had enough.

I get the whole grow your own food thing, I do. When I was growing up, my parents (God love them, but they were Northern Maine, Depression-era farm folk) plowed about 90% of our backyard on an inner-city lot, to grow a Victory garden. For most of my childhood until I can remember, I was plowing, watering, hoeing, picking, weeding. I hated summer vacation.

We had three crops of okra, a continuous supply of tomatoes, two crops of carrots, cucumbers to beat the band, squash of every flavor… you get the idea. And my mom was a canning and food processing machine. Everything was either pickled, stewed or frozen, but none of it went to the neighbors. We had a converted closet on the second floor to hold all the jars from pickles to home-made catsup to spaghetti sauce to canned corn. In the basement, we had tomato ripening beds under blankets and huge crock pots full of cabbage being slowly made into sauerkraut. I was almost a teen-ager before I realized people bought this stuff in stores.

To all my neighbors who think that I am going to be their marketplace for excess vegetables, I say to you now for next year: have a plan! Learn how to can, pickle and process this stuff. Bake zucchini and pumpkin bread and freeze it. Learn how to make tomato sauce. Discover the wild world of pickling. It can be done. I’ve seen and lived it. And for $4 million dollars, I’ll teach you how to shuck, shell, process and pickle.

But I’m no longer going to be your excess vegetable dumping ground.

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A couple days ago, I was listening to some cable news show, I think it might have been MSNBC, ranting on about Dr. Laura’s use of the n-word. The content of the show is not important. What is important is that we have reduced our discourse of fairly substation discussions of our culture into “baby-babble” where parents would spell out words that they didn’t want little Johnny to hear.

Are we all three-years old in America? The answer is Y-E-S.

And this got me thinking that every letter in the alphabet should have its own dash word that you can’t say in polite company. Why should F, C, B, N and R get special treatment? (you do know what those words are, right? Ask a nearby teen-ager or Old Fart)

At the risk of putting DogWalkBlog on every Nanny-watch list and banned from every school library, I’d like to open up the comments to suggestions for each letter. Some, of course, have already been reserved so there is no need to discuss those (really, please don’t)

Hopefully, at this end of this little exercise, we will have an authoritative list of twenty-six dash-words.

A-word: Open for suggestions
B-word: Closed
C-word: Closed
D-word: Open for suggestions
E-word: Open for suggestions
F-word: Closed
G-word: Open for suggestions
H-word: Open for suggestions
I-word: Open for suggestions
J-word: Open for suggestions
K-word: Open for suggestions
L-word: Open for suggestions
M-word: Open for suggestions
N-word: Closed
O-word: Open for suggestions
P-word: Open for suggestions
Q-word: Open for suggestions
R-word: Closed (thanks, Sarah Palin!)
S-word: Closed
T-word: Open for suggestions
U-word: Open for suggestions
V-word: Open for suggestions
W-word: Open for suggestions
X-word: Open for suggestions
Y-word: Open for suggestions
Z-word: Open for suggestions

Suggest away in the comments!

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When my son was just shy of his fifth year, we found ourselves in an Old Country Buffet on a Saturday afternoon. For those of you not familiar with the format of the all-you-can-eat-for-one-low-price buffet, these places usually have a lower price afternoon service that did not include carved meats and a higher price evening service that started about 4:00pm. For the extra savvy buffet-goer, it was generally known that if you came in about 3:30 or so and stalled a bit on some salad, you could sneak in and get the good stuff for a lunch price. I did not partake of this little loophole but sometimes, we found ourselves in that limbo time.

On this particular Saturday, we had started lunch late and my son had eyed the ham they were putting out for dinner. On that day, he really, really wanted a piece of ham and asked if I would get him one. I told him, “If you want ham, you will have to get it yourself.” He knew the lunch/dinner rule. He thought about it and spent the next ten minutes or so pleading with me to get him a slice of ham. I stood fast.

Finally, he stood up and held his plate in his two little hands. “Please, please, please,” he kept saying with his cute little face, two blue eyes and his shock of white blond hair. Sensing I was not going to budge, he started walking backwards toward the buffet line. I suspect that he thought if he kept his face toward me, I would relent. I stood firm. “If you want ham, you will get it yourself.” “What do I say?” “You’ll figure it out.” “Please, daddy. Please, please.” “You’ll figure it out.”

This kept going for thirty feet or so until he disappeared behind the wall of the buffet. My heart was pounding as I waited for him to come back. Within minutes, he came tearing out from behind the wall, with a plate of ham in his hands, face beaming and grinning as wide as I’ve ever seen. He hopped onto his chair and ate and chatted breathlessly about how Serge gave him some ham. “I just asked and he gave it to me,” he said over and over.

I have a memory that has not diminished or flickered in twenty years. He learned self-reliance and hadn’t stopped since. To this day, I need only say, “Get your own ham” and we both know what that means. His younger sister has also since learned the lesson, but that is a story for another day.

What does that have to do with college education?
Learning self-reliance doesn’t start when you graduate from college or when you enter college. It starts much, much sooner. It could even start as early as four years-old when you really want a slice of ham. As a parent of two full-grown adults, I was a bit shocked at how hard the task of teaching self-reliance lay ahead.

When I turned eleven, I got three paper routes that started my working life that has yet to take a break. Throughout high school, I worked evenings and weekends and extra long hours in the summer in hot restaurant kitchens and grimy back-room retail stockrooms. Throughput college, I lived in the worst cockroach-infested hole, drove a broken-down Chevette and lived on coffee, cigarettes and vending machine food for four years. I carried a full-time load and worked a minimum of forty hours a week. For me and most of my college peers, there was no safety net or checks from mom and dad. This was it. I learned self-reliance early and well.

I assumed it was going to be the same for my kids. And I was wrong.

By the time my kids were old enough to have paper routes, the opportunity disappeared. Child labor laws swooped in and made that illegal. “Think of the children” was the rally cry. Baby-sitting and lawn mowing were also out. No good parent now-a-days leaves a twelve year-old in charge of their baby and operating a power lawnmower at such a young age is dangerous. They might cut a foot off.

My job as a parent determined to teach my kids self-reliance became extra hard as I had to fight the school system, the state and even my own parent peers. When I expected my kids to solve their own problems, I was being a bad parent. When I expected my kids to resolve personality conflicts with their teachers, I was being an uninvolved parent. When I expected my kids to fight for their own spot on the team, I was being cruel. In truth, they were expected to get their own ham and they knew it, though they did beg, “please daddy, fix this, just this once.” Looking back now at the self-reliant adults they have become at nineteen and twenty-five, not one of us would have had it any other way.

The earliest a kid can get a work permit in the state of Ohio is sixteen and only when signed off through the school system. The hours are limited and the rules are such a ridiculous burden for employers that most don’t even bother to hire anyone under seventeen. Banks no longer issue checking accounts to anyone of minor age. As a result, most kids enter college having no employment experience and no self-reliance skill.

Colleges know that and they have adapted as quickly and firmly as any institution ever has. In a span of one generation, they have shifted focus from providing an education to being in the food and housing business. Colleges have adopted a Disney Resorts approach where the classes and degrees are just the draw to fill rooms and bellies, all the while milking the parental cows on whom most students are entirely dependent. And that group has more money than starving college students living in rat holes and driving broken-down Chevettes, so prices go up. After all, what parent wouldn’t want the best for their children?

And the dependence continues for another five to six years as colleges institute two-year minimum dorm policies, mandate meal plans and load the curriculum with more courses than can be finished in a four-year period just to ensure students will stay another year. With the extra load, there is no time for working and students and their parents take out larger and larger loans. And still, they learn no self-reliance.

And they graduate in their early-to-mid twenties having been taken care of their entire lives. They step blinking into the sun with their freshly minted degree in one hand and a huge load of debt in another. Nowhere in their entire arsenal can they produce a shred of self-reliance. So they move back home to mom and dad. Or they move into an apartment subsidized by mom and dad, using their huge student loans to justify their living arrangement. And the cycle of dependance continues.

But are recent college grads ready for the working world?
Some are. Those who have figured out that it is mostly about self-reliance will be fine. They will figure out how to get out from underneath their mountain of debt on their own and many are rapidly learning skills they should have learned a few years back. Many will be forced into self-reliance as their parents are forced out of employment or into early retirement with their bank accounts drained and their home foreclosed upon. For those whose reality is shockingly alarmingly, I have no doubt that they will emerge stronger because of it and the working world will be stronger on the other side for them. They will also become better parents, hopefully teaching their kids self-reliance earlier and defying the school and social systems that work to remove that bit of responsibility from parenting.

And then there are some of the mis-guided companies who will hire others and endeavor to continue to cradle them through HR-sponsored training instead of going out and finding college grads who have self-reliance skills and paying them a bit more. I cringe every time I see a new GenY book published about how companies are going to have to be flexible and change to meet the expectations of a generation who has been engineered to have everything done for them. Fortunately, not many of these are being published now as the economy slow-down is forcing a new reality for the GenY generation. Many are seeing how not teaching our kids self-reliance was actually a bad thing long term and are reversing their point of view.

In the end, though, we will all be fine as the Geezer Generations and the GenY generations will band together to ward off the upcoming generations who will also have a sense of entitlement. But this might be a hard fight as this next group will have learned self-reliance.

I am very much aware this opinion piece contains a lot of generalizations, but that doesn’t mean that they are any less true. Your experience as a twenty-something, recent college grad may be entirely different. You may have learned self-reliance early on and if so, great; you are years ahead of your peers and you’ll probably have lost the urge to set us older geezers straight about it. But if you are still walking around with that big chip on your shoulder, feel free to comment below and rant on about how I got everything wrong and stereotyped. Afterwards, if you still have the energy, go out and get your own ham. I’m dining here on mine.

This blog post is part of a blog-off series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about “Recent college grads being prepared for the working world.” To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.

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DAYTON – Internet entrepreneur Jeff Pulver strode, or rather, “surfed” his way into Dayton on Sunday, Aug. 22, as part of a road trip promoting 140Conf.com’s event Oct. 20 in Detroit. About two dozen emergent media/social networking and technology denizens met Pulver for a “meet and greet” at Blind Bob’s, 430 E. Fifth St. in Dayton.

“Detroit will show everything we do,” Pulver said summing up what he hoped the Dayton stop would help accomplish.

At Blind Bob’s Pulver was met by Gary Lietzell, Mayor of Dayton, who presented Pulver with a special proclamation from the city. Lietzell hoped that Pulver’s visit would help “Tell the world about us,” and would entrench his commitment to emergent technology and social networking that he pushed during his run for Mayor in 2009.

“I embraced it during my campaign,” Lietzell said of social networking.

Pulver, the Chairman and Founder of pulver.com, is on a week-long trip that will see him traverse the Midwest well ahead of the Detroit event, to be held at The Fillmore Detroit. He has testified before Congress on the importance of social media, and has been a key shaper in the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts on Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) development and its public policy implications.

Many in Pulver’s audience at Blind Bob’s were either using laptops or hand-held devices displaying the vision of pulver.com’s “Exploring the State of Now.” Many followed Pulver’s trip from Columbus, where held a similar event to the one in Dayton, to Dayton via an Ustream feed. Pulver had promised an Ustream or similar feed of his entire Midwest trip.

When asked why he chose Dayton, Pulver proudly stated, “Because when we announced our plans for the trip, Dayton was the first to shout out ‘Please stop.’”

His two-hour event in Dayton was then followed up by a similar event in Cincinnati before he traveled to Indiana on Monday. His trip culminates in Detroit on Saturday, Aug. 28.

Dayton is home to several social media groups, including New Media Dayton (NMD) led by Carole Baker. NMD is an organization that coordinates speakers and regular meet up between social media and business groups in and around the Dayton Area. Another group that has adopted social media tools is Dayton Most Metro (DMM) led by Bill Pote. DMM strives to be the central source of all things happening in Dayton.

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Jeff Pulver of 140Conf poses with Gary Leitzell, the Mayor of Dayton at the Dayton Road Trip meet up for the 140conf.

When we arrived at Blind Bob’s for the 140conf Road Trip Meet Up, there were already a dozen people there, waiting for and watching Jeff Pulver and his “roadies” navigate the Ohio freeway system. When Jeff arrived we had over twenty people there and more on the way. Apparently, this was a very large crowd, so we’re very proud of our Dayton peeps!

Gary Leitzell, the Mayor of Dayton (the REAL mayor, not the fake one on Foursquare) joined us early and stayed almost the whole time until his official duties as Grand Marshall of the Ale Fest kick-off parade pulled him away. We can now claim another “first” in a long list of firsts for Dayton, Ohio; the first mayor to join an official Tweet Up! Dayton, first in flight; first in Social Media!

We’ll be publishing the more “official” story in the next couple of days, but for now, we have a ton of photos and some video. Cindy DeVelvis also shot some really cool footage that will be available soon. Links here when that is online.

To download all the photos, grab the zip file here.

And some videos…

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I went to a #140conf Meet Up with Jeff Pulver in Dayton this afternoon (more stuff about that later) and afterwards, we headed out to dinner at the Olive Garden to celebrate my son’s birthday. He ordered a plate of something that was on the menu, but had no price.

“How much is that,” I asked Beth, our server.

“13.99,” she said… “Oh, wait, sorry… that is 14.99.”

Naturally, I thought we were negotiating, so I proceeded to question the price of everything everybody else ordered and threw out a counter-offer each time. It went all the way down to how much she was going to charge us for the puppy box, the mints and water.

It was fun; we connected.

Then our bill came. I opened it up and found the itemized receipt above. She got the tip she said she was worth, which was a bit more than 20% of the bill.

It wasn’t the great service or the food quality that was worth the tip, but that Beth showed she was engaged with us, she got the running joke and was willing to not only play along, but took the extra step to do a “Yes, and….”

So Beth, this blog post is your “Yes, and…” from us to you.

Thank you for the wonderful dinner. You were successful in making the sameness of a franchise a very memorable place.

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Let the world know you are at the Grand Canyon and your 60″ flat screen TV can be easily removed from your wall and that thieves will also have enough time to search for all the cables and the remote, maybe even have a cup of coffee to relax after loading it into the van.

Geotag your photos so people know exactly where you live and what you have, where you go and when you’ll be there.

Read how someone else experienced the Golden Gate Bridge so you don’t have to think too hard for an original thought. Just add a “I totally agree” button to everything you do.

This is dangerous, people. Time to think about who you are online. Time to think about who you want to be off line as well.

PS Guy eating with his baby (2:27). Really? You had to check in during dinner with your wife and baby? Does anyone else what to be married to this douche?

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Come join us at Blind Bob’s in the Oregon District for the social media event of the year. Jeff Pulver will be stopping in Dayton on Sunday, August 22 from 3 – 5pm to mix it up with the most fun group of awesome Daytonians (and a few from the surrounding area, but we’ll deputize them for the day!)

For complete information, including the list of people going and directions, click here. And when you get there and find that the most exciting person you know won’t be there, it’s only because you haven’t sign up yet! Really, awesome you.

There will be lots of video and photos shot courtesy of Michael Blackwell of DryRainMedia. So, comb your hair, put on a clean shirt and get down to Blind Bob’s.

Read the press release here

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I’ve been mulling over this issue of the Park51 community center containing a mosque for the past week now, trying to reconcile in my own head the disconnect I have with an unconditional freedom of and from religion and the general unease and empathy I feel with those who oppose the placement of a community center containing a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. After being scared to death by the Republicans and called ignorant and intolerant by the Liberals, I struck me what was at the core of this issue.

Most Americans don’t see Islam as a religion but rather as an imperial political and cultural machine. When a “religion” becomes politicized, it then becomes fair game to oppose, much like Fascism, Communism or Socialism. The intolerance becomes perfectly rational because this “thing” you oppose is no longer a religion. Ok, just hold on a minute and I’ll explain how I’ve arrived at this conclusion.

In the West, we’ve been conditioned to believe that the natural state of religion is separate from the secular state. When we look “over there” at governments like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, The Philippines and such, we see a religion that trumps the secular state. To us, it is the equivalent of the Supreme Court being overruled by clergymen and The Bible.

I object strongly to the Republicans painting a picture of fear and mistrust, comparing Islam to Naziism and the like. I get why they are doing it. Nobody pays attention to the rational anymore. Everything has to be hyperbolic. But what irritates me even more than the calculated contrived craziness of the Right is the haughty indignation of the Left, calling us all ignorant for not recognizing Islam as a religion for which we need to be tolerant. They scold and berate us for having a bit of trepidation about the intent of the Muslim community when clearly we can see established government states being unnecessarily cruel and inhuman, run by the same religion that tells us it is peace-loving. We are conflicted. What is Islam then? Islam ultimately must be a religion that is peaceful until it gains power. Then it is not.

For eight years, the peace-loving Evangelical Christians had the US Government at its beck and call, wielding power over who was and was not worthy to serve as an elected in a secular government. Only toward the end of the George Bush Administration did their stranglehold loosen.

A Catholic as late as the 1960s was seen as unelectable because it was believed that allegiance to the Pope in Rome would trump the Oath to defend the Constitution. John Kennedy proved that wrong; Bart Stupek made us wonder all over again.

In 1620, the Puritans landed in Massachusetts after getting kicked out of England and The Netherlands and promptly set up a theocracy which eventually led to some witch trials some seventy years later. Eventually, secular sense took hold, but not before a lot of people were scared into confessing sins which they did not commit as a matter of civil law. It is a convenient myth to believe that the Puritans were kicked out of England for practicing their religion, when in fact, they wanted their version of religion to rule the State. King James kinda had it right.

We mistrust the Muslim intentions because we mistrust our own. We’ve seen how a religion that purports itself to be tolerant, patient, peace-loving and kind will turn cruel, ugly and destructive when it gains power. While many of us can’t articulate exactly why we feel like we do about the Mosque at Park51, these feelings of uneasiness are no less valid. It is not empty fear stoked up by loud voices nor is it intentional ignorance and faulty logic the arrogant intellectuals would have us believe. Perhaps it is our own sense of history with regard to religion that gives us pause.

But we are not ignorant, fear-mongering intolerant trolls. We mistrust because there is a reason.

And a small pup is easier to kill than a full-sized bear.

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I found myself sitting across the desk from my banker one day last week. Apparently, PNC had screwed up a bunch of my accounts as they migrated from National City and it was serious enough that the phone support people couldn’t help. They said I had to trudge into the local branch.

Ok, fine. I hadn’t seen Mark since the time one of his tellers had a mild heart attack last year anyway. It was time. When you lose the face time, you lose the relationship.

So, there I was, taking the first five minutes of the meeting seriously as I explained what I needed and how the bank should fix things. And my mind starts to wander all over the place to smart-alec comments I could be making. As I was looking at Mark who is probably ten, maybe fifteen years younger than me, I was struck by how serious he was all the time. And it occurred to me that I have no idea what that must be like.

When I was in high school, I was apparently a wise-acre. I didn’t know that, I was just having fun with my studies. Last year, I had the opportunity to connect with an old English teacher of mine. When asked if she remembered me, said:

And I just got a flash of a picture of an Irish face, lots of curly hair trying to creep down the face and break some horrible rule of the school, framed by a blue shirt that was a deeper blue than all the other blue shirts.

The smart-alec in me wanted to quip back, “I’m Scottish, not Irish. You can tell the difference because I’m sober ’til at least 3:00 o’clock” but I bit my tongue. I went to a Catholic High School and it probably would not have been appropriate.

When I get in my twenties perhaps, my brain will start to get more serious. Nope, things got worse. I got a really cool job where they paid me to travel, so my stage just got bigger. I saw even more people and things that were more absurd than they were in my backyard.

When I get in my thirties, I’m sure my brain will start to get more mature. That didn’t happen as my two kids became unwitting extras in my non-stop comedy show. On their soccer sign up forms under dad’s occupation, I would write “Professional bum.” For their mom’s, I would write “High fashion underwear model.” I figured one of us would eventually get a call and it wasn’t going to be me. Nobody ever called but it didn’t stop me from doing it.

When I hit forty, that’s when I will grow up. Not having any of that. I just became a more dangerous smart-a** because I had money. Practical jokes and goofy indulgences were not a problem as I could afford to do things I only thought possible before.

I am now staring at the business end of my fifties and I can’t go more than five minutes into a serious conversation. It’s not that I’m immature because I have raised two well-adjusted kids who are now adults, bought and sold a couple homes, built several businesses, I pay taxes, I have conversations with bankers in suits and apparently am a respected member of my community.

People call me sir. And that is really, really funny to me because I see me from this side of my brain.

Yeah, they must just be messing with me. I’m as young as I ever was.

Does anyone else suffer chronic smart-alecitis or is it just me?

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A Verizon service truck parked at one of my neighbors yesterday and I snapped a photo of it on our walk. Notice the sticker stuck on the side, crooked and added as an afterthought. When I see that, I see Verizon treating Internet access as an afterthought, an add-on feature, like the sticker they slapped on their trucks.

They couldn’t even get it on straight. And we are now going to trust them in bed with Google on net neutrality rules? Why exactly would we do that again?

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How much does it cost you to exist for one hour? Have you ever asked?

Just for a rough guess, add up all the expenses of replacing the stuff that breaks, the cost of going to your job, your mortgage, taxes, tuition bills, gifts for relatives and friends, etc. Then divide by 8,904 (the number of hours in a year, assuming an extra 6 hours to offset for leap year.) How much is that? Is it higher than the US minimum wage?* If it is for you, you no longer have to wonder why you are broke. If you work forty hours a week, there are an additional one hundred twenty eight** uncompensated hours your wage does not cover.

It is my goal each year to reduce the cost of my hourly existence by .10 per hour. That is a pretty hefty goal considering all the upward pressures corporations keep heaping on me to buy more stuff or pay more fees to power what I already own. (PNC, Apple, Vectren, DP&L, Anthem BCBS, Amazon; I’m talking about you!)

It’s not all about money even though that may be the easiest scale to keep track of the cost of existence. It also about time and the quality of the experience. A friend of mine remarked to me several years ago that the worst thing she ever did to her life was buy a house and move to the suburbs. She had a baby at the time. (Since grown and graduated from college. They are still in the house she hates.) She had her epiphany while mowing the lawn and weeding the garden. For an average home of 2,000 sq ft, this usually takes a solid morning every week. If you then factor in “recovery” time for hot and humid weather, that is pretty much a solid day every week beating back nature.

She realized that the whole time she was mowing the lawn, she could be spending that time with her daughter, exploring the insides of a library or museum, flying a kite in the park, taking a road trip to someplace new and exciting or biking a trail. Instead, in her quest to give her daughter a higher quality of life in the suburbs where she was “supposed” to raise a child, she traded the opportunity of experiences for an anchor that demanded a day of her life every week. To further depress herself, she started adding up the hours she spent commuting to her job twenty miles away, the cost of maintaining the car and her work wardrobe and daycare. Fortunately, she stopped before any depression set in.

I think most of us live like that, denying how much cost our lives demand of us in time and treasure, simply because this is how we are supposed to live. A responsible parent does not raise her children in the middle of a city. A successful executive doesn’t live in a one-bedroom walk-up and walk to work.

Some people like spending that time in the garden and for them, it is worth the cost in time and treasure. That is ok. For them, that is the smaller life. For all we know, if they did not have a large yard and flower beds to mow and weed, they would be spending their money and time in speakeasies instead of libraries.

Both the New York Times and MSNBC ran stories yesterday on couples living the simple life. I’d link to them, but I already spent the obligatory five minutes searching for them. Too much clutter to deal with, so if you care enough to read them or check my facts, you go find them. I already had the experience. As usual, the media is getting this all wrong. They are focusing on the expense side of thing, i.e., how big a place to live, how much they spend, etc, and ignoring the overall quality of simple. I’d like to see how families are living simply too, not just a couple, but that is probably an entirely different rant.

I predict what we will be seeing in the next several years is marketers and retailers “packaging” the simple life, inflating the cost of it and re-selling it much like they sold the American Dream of a house in the ‘burbs, surrounded by a yard you have to mow every week, stuffed to the gills with crap that breaks on a cycle of planned obsolescence. And most of us will buy into it and never notice our time and money wallets are being picked.

For now, I use a simple formula when adding anything to my life. I ask myself a series of questions: How long will this last? How will I dispose of it when it wears out or breaks? Can I repair this? Will this cause me more time commitment? Will this reduce the time I already spend on ‘maintenance’ tasks? Where will I put this? Will this reduce my hourly cost of existence? Will this make me happy? It surprises me how often the answer to at least one of those questions causes me to put something back on the shelf, click away from a website or hang up the phone.

That is just “stuff.” Julien Smith has the start of an excellent treatise on the “cost and return of friendship” with his blog entry, Follower Hyperinflation. It may not have been the original intent of the article, but it can branch in so many ways. I suppose you can also explore the cost of contracts, volunteerism, family, etc in much the same way.

Ironically, this thousand or so word blog post was originally over three thousand words. If some of the arguments are incomplete and transitions appear a bit choppy, it is probably because they are. I had to hit publish at some point and the keeper of the deadlines was banging down the door. Add what you feel I left out or argued badly in the comments.

This blog post is part of a blog-off series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about “The smaller life.” To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.

Veronika Miller, @modenus Modenus, Brighton
Paul Anater, @paul_anater Kitchen and Residential Design, Florida
Nick Lovelady @cupboards, Cupboardsonline, Alabama
Richard Holschuh, @concretedetail Concrete Detail, Vermont
Rufus Dogg, @dogwalkblog DogWalkBlog Dayton, by way of Minneapolis
Cindy Frewen Wuellner, @Urbanverse Urbanverse
Becky Shankle, @ecomod, Eco-Moderism
Saxon Henry, @DESIGNCOMMOTION Chair Chick, NYC
ABC Dragoo, @abcddesigns abcddesign, NYC
Sean Lintow, Sr., @SLSConstruction, SLS Construction, Alabama
Steve Mouzon, @stevemouzonThe Original Green, Miami Beach
AptTherapy, @AptTherapy, Apartment Therapy

*In case you are wondering, my number for 2009 was $5.43. I’m slightly behind my goal for 2010 but not sliding backward. **Yeah, yeah, and some minutes for leap year.

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Way back in May, I blogged about how me and Gary Leitzell, the Mayor of Dayton, became best buds. And I realize that in all the excitement of making a new best friend, I forgot to follow up and tell everyone how it went. So, several months later, here goes.

By the way, if you have not already signed up for the Dayton 140conf Meet Up on Aug 22, do it now. I’ll wait. (I figured I’d drag you in first, then hit you up. Clever, eh?)

Ok, so here is how it all went down.

We exchanged available dates and agreed to Friday, May 28 at the Smokin’ BBQ in the Oregon District. As the date approached, I got a little anxious that no other exchange had taken place, so I was a bit unsure if Gary was going to show or not. I almost didn’t go myself. But I did.

I got there a bit early and ordered. Lt. Larry Faulkner of the Dayton Police was there as well, probably on an advance mission to check me out to make sure I wasn’t some nutjob. (I am, but apparently didn’t look it )

As I was eating my BBQ (sliced brisket, smoked bologna for the dogs) and settling into my Kindle, Gary comes strolling along down Fifth. We wave through the glass and him, Larry and I had a nice lunch.

We talked about Dayton and how we could bring some passion back for the city. We talked about the media and some politics in general. But mostly we talked about everyday things, like his kids and the family of cats that had moved into his home.

And that next Monday, Gary and I became friends on Facebook. And perhaps this is the small start of a connection with city government that doesn’t feel like a heartless, soulless cog in a larger machine.

How are you reaching out to your local government?

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Here is what Sallie and Charlie look like waiting for the second half of my lunch. Almost every day.

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As plans for an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero move forward, the arguments for and against is getting more and more contentious. On the one end of the debate, Sarah Palin, Rev. Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and others are outraged that radical Islam can be allowed to exist so close to “sacred ground.” On the other end, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others claim that the United States is a country of laws that tolerate all or no religion and that the Islamic community center has a right to exist where it wants.

But both sides are wrong and are wagging the dog.

I happened to be listening to the soundtrack of Les Misérables this morning with Morning Joe debating the issue. As it was, “Who am I?” was playing and the lyrics below burned into my brain:

If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!

At the end of the song, Jean Valjean decides that the punishment of eternal damnation was far worse than any punishment the state and Javert could inflict on him and declared loudly that he was 24601!* Without going too deeply into a character analysis, Jean Valjean’s faith eventually overwhelmed his need for corporal survival. One could argue all day long that it wasn’t really his faith in God and his fear of eternal damnation, but his place in the community, etc, etc. But they would be wrong. It was his faith or his “bargain” with God.

It is not about religion, the rule of law, public sensibilities or tolerance. It is all about the individual’s relationship with their God. In the end, each player in this act believes he or she will be standing naked before their God and defend his or her actions. Muslims will defend they did all they could to expand Islam and Christians will defend they did all they could to be tolerant of others.

Eventually, the rule of law in the United States will say that there is no legal basis for denying the group from building a mosque, regardless of how close it is to Ground Zero. For Muslims, expansion into a Judeo-Christian stronghold like the United States is a victory. For Christians who believe in forgiveness, accepting Muslims into the fold is a victory. Both sides will win the tussle because they define victory differently. In the end, however, the “State” known as the United States of America will cease. It may take a hundred years, it may take a thousand, but the path of tolerance will eventually doom us. Time is an irrelevant metric for God.

And for many, that will be ok because by then, the concept of a state existing without a religion will be as foreign a concept as a body without a soul, like a bulldozer without a driver, like a dog without a master.

*If you really, really want to go deeper into this, start thinking about the cry to Allah that each of the 9/11 hijackers shrieked as they crashed into the buildings. The parallels here are frightening.

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I was stumbling around Twitter, opened the door to what I thought was the restroom and found myself staring at this:

I frantically searched for the remote control to change the channel before anyone else walked into the room and realized this was not a movie set for an adult film; is a real bath tub.

I admire the craftsmanship. I get the quirkiness of the design. I can appreciate the “cojones” it takes to commit to something this big, this odd as a bath. I get all that. I’m not sure what is most disturbing; the foot sweat pouring from the faucet or the obvious hooker-heels look.

But it still tries too hard to be cool. And too hard is just never cool; it is uncomfortably awkward.

This blog post is part of an informal “blog-off” where a pack of know-it-alls brazenly comment on one topic selected at random by somebody at random who couldn’t run out of the room fast enough. We tell ourselves our opinions on this stuff is influential, but most of the time it won’t make a damn bit of difference. That being said and my conscience clear now that I have warned you, I encourage you to drop by the list of folks below and see what their reaction to the shoe tub is:

Alexandra Williams @Alexandrafunfit
Nick @cupboards
AventeTile @AventeTile
Rufus Dogg, AKC, PhD, DS @dogwalkblog
Madame Sunday @ModernSauce
Mr. Paul Anater @Paul_Anater
Becky Shankle @ecomod

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I was doing research for a bit I’m writing regarding this recent recession and its comparison to the Great Depression, when I ran across the Hobo Code. As an avid student of history, I knew it existed, along with the hobo markings, but I found it compelling enough to share it here. Note that it was “adopted” in 1889 as a “concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body.”

I may burn in Hell for all eternity for the sin of blasphemy, but I think the Hobo Code may be an even better code than the Ten Commandments. It is certainly shorter and more to the point than the Bible.

• Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.
• When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
• Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
• Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
• When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
• Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
• When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
• Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
• If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
• Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
• When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
• Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
• Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
• Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
• Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
• If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it. Whether for or against the accused, your voice counts

For those who want to gain a better understanding of who Americans have become and what this whole “American Dream” thing is, in my opinion, there are two bits of history that have forged it; The Jacksonian period and the Great Depression era. This current recessionary period and the convergence of two large generations — the Boomers and the GenYers — also have the potential for adding to that narrative and shaping the Dream for several generations that will come after us. Those who know history will have the most power to forge change.

Read up on your history if you haven’t yet. Your voice may be the one called upon.

NB: I usually either use photos I shot or from the libraries at iStockPhoto for my posts. I had no hobo photos and no other human around here wanted to play the part, so I went to Wikipedia and grabbed a photo in the public domain. The reason I did not use one from iStockPhoto was I was disgusted by what they tagged as hobo photos. They either had homeless men or perverse depictions of rail and hitchhiking travel. Sad. I think someone over there needs to read some more history.

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I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show tonight and the segment about Blago came on. I could not believe what I was seeing! The horror, the carnage of typography on my screen.

Here is what was shown:

Notice that they used a single quote when it should have been an apostrophe to indicate a contraction of Blagojevich, like so:

Apostrophes everywhere are pretty hopping mad and demand an apology from TRMS. In this era of high unemployment, the apostrophe union is demanding an explanation as to why a single quote was used when there was clearly a large pool of qualified, skilled apostrophes available for the job.

Maddow, we’re waiting. And we’re not going to accept a contracted apology.

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Radical conservatives failed to destroy and disband the NAACP this week like they did ACORN with Andrew Breitbart’s posting of a edited video featuring Shirley Sherrod. At the end of the week, it really didn’t matter that their primary objective was not met as the mainstream media handed them an even bigger victory; virtually no successful news from the White House. The only thing most Americans know about Barack Obama this week is how quick he was to fire Sherrod* and how thin-skinned his administration is about race. The Sherrod video turned out to be a huge distraction that sucked the oxygen out of the entire news cycle for the week.

On Wednesday, Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. This bill was first introduced in December of 2009 in response to “too big to fail” and the criminal abuses of the banking and Wall Street systems. On Thursday, 2.5 million unemployed Americans breathed a sigh of relief as unemployment benefits were restored.

Did you know that? Most didn’t as the pollsters made their rounds, asking how effective Obama is as president. Again, media concluded that Obama is in trouble as his popularity slides even in the wake of successful legislation. Wonder why.

Conservatives have found their dead parakeet. All they need do when it looks like the President is about to have a success is float some outrageous video that baits race, which gets the left all worked up and the right mad as hell which only riles the legit media into a non-stop twenty-four hours of back-to-back coverage. It’s like a fixation on a shiny metal balloon.

Devious, underhanded, juvenile but a pretty smart strategy. It would have been brilliant if they didn’t just stumble into it.

NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, Reuters, AP. Just look away. It’s just a shiny balloon.

*I know that Barack Obama didn’t fire Sherrod, but how many of our 300million + Einsteins out there know it? Exactly.

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I am really starting to re-think my whole opposition to Sarah Palin in 2012. I’m beginning to think that maybe four years (or eighteen months, whichever comes first) of Palin’s malapropery might be just the thing to get this country into a good mood once again.

It’s the most fun my English degree has had in years! Let’s refudiate anger, fear and hate. Vote Palin 2012 and let the pun begin. Fun? No, pun. Who cares, it’s only one little letter.

MalapropPrez.com Whose with me?

“Personally, I think this @sarahpalinUSA odorous refudiation is much ado about nothing,” Shakespeare quips. #dogberry

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When you turn fifty in America, you are old. When you turn fifty-five you are too old and should consider dying to make room for the next generation of revenue-producing units. It’s the patriotic thing to do. Hear me out on this.

When you turn fifty-five, the human resources department is looking for a legal way to get rid of you despite what they say about you having vital experience. You’re making too much money, you don’t go to as many training classes as they think you should, you are not as mobile with that family and mortgage anchoring you down and you are starting to contribute a whole lot more to the 401(k) than they had planned for matching funds. They will lay you off in a heartbeat and you will not be able to find another job. Ever. Not in this economy.

When you turn fifty-five, the health insurance premiums for the plan you had to buy on your own because your employer could no longer afford to provide benefits will double over last year. Your out-of-pocket health care costs will also go up and you will start racking up pre-existing conditions, making you ineligible for any other insurance. But you only have ten more years to go to qualify for Medicare, so maybe… oh, wait, they are going to raise that to seventy. You’re screwed.

By the time you are fifty-five, you should have already produced at least one, maybe two future revenue-generating units for the corporate consumer machine. They were far more expensive than you thought they would be, but you’ve put off saving for retirement until they finished school and left. You are now ready to front-load your 401(k) and mutual fund portfolio…

But wait! CNN tells you that you have only about a 30% chance of outliving your retirement plan at the rate you’re going. Oh, sure you’ve helped fuel the economy by having kids, buying a larger house than you could afford, paying for their tuition and feeding and clothing them, but now, you are on the taking end of the economy. Whoa, there! Your country frowns on those who take out of the system, regardless of much you’ve contributed in.

Business wants your money. They tell you this all the time by marketing to Boomers. But they don’t want you actually working for them, drawing a salary and sucking up the benefits. Heck, those young GenY brats will work for half what you need and still think it a fortune. Thank God Walmart hires old people as greeters. Oh, you can’t stand for eight hours a day because your sciatica has been acting up? You should go see a doctor about that. Insurance? Man, that’s tough luck buddy.

Next!

The business of America is business and you are standing in the way when you start getting old. Manup and die off when you hit fifty-five. Your country needs you to make that sacrifice to help reduce the unemployment rate and the federal deficit all at the same time. Moreover, you are likely to have life insurance and your kids could sure use that money to prop up retail sales.

Have you lost hope yet? Really? The great United States of America does not need its future derailed by negative-thinking pinheads like you. Is you or is you ain’t a patriot? Time to decide.

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I was flipping through the morning news shows today and now that the BP Oil gusher is all capped off and nobody really cares about that anymore, there is more bandwidth to talk about jobs or the lack of jobs. Apparently media anchors are stunned that companies are hoarding cash and and not sharing with everyone by creating jobs.

They inevitably interview some know-nothing economics professor who parrots the US Chamber of Commerce position that it is the crushing weight of regulation and uncertainty that is making business hesitant to hire. Everyone keeps saying it over and over and over, so it must be true, right?

No.

Business creates jobs and hires for one of two reasons; to fulfill existing demand and to create new demand. In short, they need a visible, viable revenue stream and that stream comes from customers. A private-sector job is not a charity handout or a social program. It exists because it makes money for a company. Period.

But business is looking out on the horizon and not seeing any customers lining up to buy their goods and services. They are seeing no potential customers behind the ones that are not there. The customers that are looking to buy are bottom-feeders who demand a low price and high maintenance and then leave once they find a better price. Many businesses are saying “no” and just sticking the cash in the bank, squeezing their existing employees a little harder for increased productivity and waiting it out for real customers to come along.

Moreover, if government were to lift regulations and decrease taxes, business would still not hire without a viable revenue stream. They would just pocket the money and fatten up the bottom line. In addition, since they now need fewer employees to perform regulatory tasks, they would let them go, further increasing profits. But, they still would not hire until they see a viable revenue stream. I know because I am one of them.

Of course the Chamber is going to ask the government for less regulation and lower taxes. That is all the government can give them. What they really want to ask for is a crap-load of people to buy goods and services from their members, but that is silly and they know it. The government can’t (or shouldn’t) compel people to buy a certain level of goods and services just so business can hire more people. What the Chamber is doing is setting the government up as the “boogie-man” or a common enemy for their members as it takes the heat off their members inability or unwillingness to dive in and make investments on new good and services, on the very probable risk that they will lose the farm in the process. No business is going to do that, so they need a common enemy the average Joe can understand. The government becomes Dale Snitterman.

The Chamber can’t afford the population to turn it’s anger on its members. Americans already think most businesspeople are greedy, corrupt, manipulative, unfeeling, cold-hearted bastards who would sell their own grandmother for an extra dimes of profit or stock price increase.

We’re all being played again. The real solution is for us to stick our necks out and dig into the savings we don’t have because we’ve been cashing in on our home equity and credit cards, living paycheck to paycheck. But the smart people who didn’t use their house as a piggy bank are not going to stick their necks out to help those who did.

And we keep staring each other down. Business who won’t hire because they don’t see a revenue stream and consumers who can’t spend because they haven’t got a job.

It’s Dale Snitterman’s fault! Let’s get him, yells the Chamber. And media runs cheering in predictable mob-like fashion, flamed on by those who know better, relieved that the stupid populace is not throwing bricks through the windows, looting the stores, spilling casks of wine and highjacking trucks in desperate retaliation.

Business knows that it can’t sustain profitability based on cost-cutting forever. Eventually, the sales they are getting will decline as more people become unemployed and are unable to purchase goods and services. But, they also know that the cash-rich companies are more likely to survive a siege longer than their competitors and eventually, they either buy them up or allow the competition to crumble, gaining market share by default in the process.

Customers will come along eventually. It is a big game of chicken where time and nature will ultimately force consumers to buy stuff they can’t afford but need to sustain life. And the ball will begin rolling again. Business knows that. Economists know that. What they don’t know is how long that will take.

In the meantime we can either do something, anything; or blame Dale Snitterman.

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Today is Bastille Day. I realized this morning that I have a ton of short stories from my childhood just collecting dust. So, I thought I’d share one a year until I run out or die, whichever comes first. For those of you who know me, I am half French, descended from the mighty Pelletiers and Boutots. A brief search discovers that half of them stayed drunk long enough to wake up late on the wrong side of the river bank after the Treaty of Paris. Being French, they simply did not care all that much about a river between them. Still don’t.

2010 story: I speak French for the first time
When I was a pup of about ten years old, my grandmother — who was almost sixty years old — boarded an airplane for the very first time in her life in Bangor, Maine and flew to visit our litter of five halfway around the world in St. Paul, MN. My grandfather chickened out at the last minute and stayed home. It must have been terrifying for her, but she insisted on seeing her grandkids before she died.*

She had lived her entire life in the very small town of Fort Kent, Maine, just a skip across the St. John River. She spoke no English and we spoke no French. My parents were adamant about us assimilating.

To prepare us for our grandmother’s visit, my mom taught us only one phrase in French:
Je ne parle pas français

When my grand-mère spoke to us kids, we were supposed to say that. As pretty as the French language was, we ended up making it ugly by saying it like a sing-song-y rhyme that Sesame Street would be proud to own the rights to. It would have embarrassed even the French soccer team.

On the first day of the visit, my dad went to pick up his mother-in-law from the airport while we all waited anxiously at home practicing our “French.” When his car came back, this very short, very round, very stern-looking women in a flowery dress steps out, clasping her beige handbag in front of her.

She spoke. And my sisters froze up. And I piped up, “Je ne parle pas français.”

There was a short silence as this old woman welled up in tears, dropped her handbag and rushed toward me with her arms outstretched. She hugged me tight, her round, ample body enveloping me like a huge down pillow. When she finally let me go, she went and wet-kissed all us kids on the foreheads and cheeks, blurting out a string of non-stop French that I had only heard previously from my mom when one of us kids had done something that warranted a very large wooden spoon made of virgin-growth forest oak and a chase around the house.

I learned later that she was so happy that my mom had finally taught us some French and kept the tradition alive. Apparently the language thing was a big deal between mother and daughter. For the next ten days, I heard my mother speak nothing but French.

She seemed happier.

Happy Bastille Day. Drink too much, eat too well, sing too loud and hold a kiss too long.

*Never underestimate a stubborn Frenchwoman. They are all stubborn.

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There is a walkway path along the Stillwater River in Englewood that connects Grossnickel Park and that new lake along Wenger road. While we generally support walkways in parks, the stretch of walkway that passes underneath Interstate 70 is very, very scary and probably quite unsafe.

Here is a short video of us walking underneath it. Notice the crumbling cement and lack of any containment cage. One of these days, a truck is going to blow a tire and those rubber shreds and steel belts will kill a jogger or dogwalker. Just don’t want it to be me.

I know Englewood is doing a ton of improvements all over the place. Can you send a crew to weld a cage in place? Thanks. I know you have the money because you cashed my tax check.

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