Art Fettig's Blog

When did you suspect that you might be jumping off a cliff without a parachute?

When asked what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered, “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

When is the last time you tried something really new? When did you suspect that you might be jumping off a cliff without a parachute? Every now and then when I try something new, when I find myself in front of a really different audience daring to try something I have never dared before I have a moment of doubt just before I begin. There is a little choking in my throat and a thought might dart through my mind, “Why are you doing this? Why didn’t you just stay back there in your comfort zone?” And later, after the presentation is over and whether I won or lost I have a feeling of accomplishment. OK, so most of the time I feel that thrill of doing something new and it worked out but even when things go wrong I feel good that I tried it and that I survived and I try hard to stand back and learn as much as I might from the experience.

I keep remembering something I heard a great speaker named Larry Wilson once said about hell. He said he believe that hell would be somewhere that you would be shown all that you might have done with your talents and your opportunities and then put somewhere that you could do nothing about it.

We all have talents, we all have opportunities but do we have the spunk, the courage to try something new?

I’m working on it.

...later the sun burst through...

My wife, Jean, and I were driving back to our home in the woods and the sky was full of clouds and then a silver lining appeared in the sky and just a few seconds later the sun burst through and it was one of the prettiest skies you could ever see.

Then perhaps a dozen golden and silver linings appeared and it brightened my whole spirit.

Jerome Kern captured this experience with his wonderful song titled Look For The Silver Lining and here is the lyric.

Look for the silver lining
When e’er a cloud appears in the blue.
Remember somewhere, the sun is shining
And so the right thing to do is make it shine for you.

A heart, full of joy and gladness
Will always banish sadness and strife
So always look for the silver lining
And try to find the sunny side of life.

Will you join me in 2012 in looking for the goodness in this wonderful world?

...pretty soon a whole mess of people were singing...

I first met Sue in Atlanta when I worked with her husband, Richard, while I was doing some speeches for Alabama Power there. Sue had grown up in a small Georgia town where she went to school barefoot and that schoolhouse had a dirt floor. She was a real Southern Woman, a successful one too.

I just want to share with you one of the stories about a really cool thing that Sue did that really impressed me. I might tell you a better one later if you like this one. It seems that one late afternoon Sue was on one of those planes that land at Atlanta and just sits there out on the strip waiting for a place to dock. Here was a full plane and the passengers were breathing easy after a smooth landing and anxious to dock so they might deplane.. Instead they had to just sit there, five minutes, ten minutes. It already seemed like an hour but when an hour had passed the passengers had not already used up all of their patience but they had run out of techniques they had learned in their anger control classes. The flight attendants had done everything they knew to pacify the angry passengers and it seemed like a near riot was fast approaching.

An hour and ten, an hour and twenty, I heard it was about at an hour and a half that Sue just popped up from her seat and standing in the aisle, she called out bravely, “I think it is time for a song. How many of you will join me in singing Amazing Grace? And they began to sing. First just a few but it sort of caught on and pretty soon a whole mess of people were singing, one chorus, two, three, they did a full four choruses of Amazing Grace with the key change and, fortunately, shortly after that she sat down and the plane pulled up to an open dock and the passengers were all allowed to deplane.

Now maybe this is something that could only happen in the Bible Belt but amazingly, one woman changed the attitude of a couple of hundred passengers and a whole lot of that tension was relieved just like that.

OK, sure she broke the rule about keeping seated but they had already violated that rule when some passengers started turning blue because they had to use the bathroom so badly.

I imagine she violated a number of passengers civil rights too if they didn’t subscribe to a belief that allowed the singing of Amazing Grace. If they turned in a complaint about this they no doubt turned in a complaint about a noise violation too because Sue can really belt it out when she gets inspired.

Sue is just that kind of person who, when she sees a problem tries to do something to make things better. Now I am sure that there were other negative forces at work on that plane. Perhaps some tort specialist was already busy passing business cards down the aisle trying to stir up a class action lawsuit. I suppose there was some talk of a revolt combined with an attack on the door so escape might be possible.

But Sue, being a sweet, kindly Christian woman just thought of what might take her mind off the troubling situation and she did her thing.

I wonder how many situations you have been in personally where a person like Sue with a little gumption and a creative mind might have saved situation or improved a bad condition?

Now I have been telling that story for perhaps twenty years and quite often folks ask me what the key change is I mentioned in the above story. I have tried to explain it in my poor way because I cannot really carry a tune. Well, the other day a friend of mine sent me a Website to check out and if you like that song Amazing Grace you will probably love this as much as I do. It tells a lot about the song but as a bonus, at the very end of this demonstration you will hear that key change in all of its glory. Check it out, if you like. http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1312

This is a good time for all of us to become brother and sister's keepers...

The year was 1948 but it could happen today. I had an office job for a railroad in Detroit and it was a very special event. The annual Christmas party. Our boss came out of his office and placed a bottle of good bourbon on the beverage table, wished everyone a Merry Christmas and left.  As soon as he got out of sight the party began.  I was nineteen years old.  Everyone got a drink, we raised a toast to one another and the next thing I knew a kind bus driver was helping me off his bus. I’d ridden to the end of the line and on the way back he stopped between streets at the alley behind our house and somehow I staggered down that alley and made my way home. Perhaps my Guardian Angel loaded me on that bus. It is still a mystery to me. This is a good time for all of us to become brother and sister’s keepers and make certain that everyone enjoys a blessed, safe Holiday Season.

I simply pushed the reverse button on my control...

The other day I was looking at all of the new electronic devices being featured at Staples. I’m sort of a Stone Age Man when it comes to electronics and do-dads. I started looking at my computer and at our TV and it suddenly hit me that we do have one new innovation we picked up somehow a few years ago from some high pressure salesman at the State Fair.  We signed up for a service that Direct TV offered.  I was simply an instant playback feature.  If I was listening to a news story, for instance, and I missed something and felt confused or I wanted to call my wife into the room and let her hear it, I simply pushed the reverse button on my control and the item was replayed.  I can do it with live TV or with something I have recorded.  I feel so good when I don’t have to just let it go while feeling frustrated.  I don’t know who came up with that but, for me, whom ever came up with that little feature brought more to me that all of the Appleberries  or whatever they call them, in the world. Like I said, I’m a Stone Age Man and I guess that is just the way it is.

The casualties for both sides during the entire campaign were 57,225.

On November 19th, 1863 at the dedication for the cemetery for those who had died at Gettysburg Edward Everett was the orator of the day and his speech lasted over two hours. Then Lincoln rose, a sheet of paper in his hand and before the jaded crowd could come to full attention he had finished his speech.

At that three day battle at Gettysburg the two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties.

Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), while Confederate casualties are estimated at 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).Nearly a third of Lee’s general officers were killed, wounded, or captured or missing. The casualties for both sides during the entire campaign were 57,225.

The following is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.,

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”