...a dozen different predictions all changing almost hourly.

As our North Carolina Governor Bev Purdue recently put it so well, here in North Carolina we just dodged another bullet.  Hurricane Earl came and went and most of us here in North Carolina are none the worse for it. Interesting is the best way to describe the news coverage of this event.  The weather people take on a whole new level of importance for a day or so before the arrival or non-arrival of the storm and there are a dozen different predictions all changing almost hourly. After a while it is sort of a let down when the whole world  isn’t destroyed in one giant blast; or at least our state should be wiped right off the map.  I can just see a weatherman climbing out of his cellar shelter to find the whole state gone and he is jumping up and down yelling, “I was right! I was right!” But alas, there is no one to hear this or record it for posterity for he is the only survivor. 

It is curious and funny to me to watch a brave weather person standing on a beach with a five mile wind blowing talking about the breaking wind when, I suspect only he is breaking wind in his wind breaker.

I don’t believe anyone was injured and storm damage is fairly low and, thank goodness, the beaches are calming and everyone should have enjoyed a wonderful Labor Day Weekend at the beach. That is, everyone but the weatherman.  I think he was last seen headed for the mountains.

... I was reminded of a conversation I had with Og many years ago.

I went to a yard sale and picked up a half a dozen Og Mandino books for just $3. I read five of them already and I was reminded of a conversation I had with Og many years ago.  I believe it was at his home and he had an open house for members of The National Speaker’s Assn. in Phoenix. I shared a thought I had with him and he encouraged me to do something with it.  Basically what I said was this, that in Og’s books and so many others the author starts out with a truly great truth on success.  You might write that idea or perhaps several other powerful such ideas down on a little card and you could give that card to an individual and say something like this, “Here on this little card are the rules of true success. Follow these little rules and you will find fame and fortune and untold happiness.”  Do you know what the person you gave that card would do? They would just throw it away or put it somewhere where they would forget about it.  Too simple.  But us authors take those powerful ideas and we write a wonderful story and in our story, somehow the principle character goes through an adventure and one by one these powerful principles disguised as secrets are revealed to him or her and when they act upon them they find happiness, health, great wealth, success or whatever they might be seeking.  Take The One Minute Manager, The Greatest Salesman in the World, make your own list of inspirational books and you might agree with me.  Everything we seek is there for the taking when we learn to believe.

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. I will be celebrating my forty nine and one half years anniversary of continued sobriety.

I have a sort of an anniversary coming up on August 13th.  The other night I did two thirty minute stand up comedy shows here in Hillsborough and a friend said to me, “Do you realize that your initials as Almost Andy are AA?”  It triggered a memory and when I arrived home I looked at our calendar and discovered that I have a little anniversary coming up.  I will be celebrating my forty nine and one half years anniversary of continued sobriety. Just six months to go until the big 50. Some people take me to task for revealing the fact that I am in AA.  After all it is Alcoholics Anonymous.  I’m not being very anonymous if I am revealing the fact that I am a member.  I started revealing this in my speeches many years ago and I can’t count all of the troubled souls who have come up to me after talks and after that they made their way to their own AA meetings.  I know a number of them who have now accumulated many years of sobriety.  Too often public perception of an alcoholic is that of one completely out of control.  When some folks see me demonstrating a reasonable display of sanity they sometimes change their perception.  When I look them in the eye and say, “I made it and so can you,” just sometimes it helps.
 
And so, God willing, six months from now I will receive a brass coin with the letter L in the center representing fifty years and on the back will be that marvelous prayer that helped so, to make it possible. It is the serenity prayer and it goes, Lord grant me the SERENITY  to accept the things I cannot change, COURAGE to change the things I can and the WISDOM to know the difference.

...generally it will produce a smile and happiness in others.

I was watching the end of an Andy Griffith Show and Andy was walkin with his son Opie down a trail and they both had fishin’ poles and Andy was whistling their theme song.  The thought came to me, “Is Andy smiling and looking happy because he is whistling or is he whistlin’ because he is happy?
 
There is a line in the song Just A Spoonful of Sugar that goes, A Robin feathering his nest has very little time to rest, while gathering his bits of twigs and twine. Though quite content in his pursuit has a happy tune to toot, he knows a song will move the job along.  Again I question, is the Robin happy because he is singing or is he singing because he is happy.  You can extend that to smiling too. Do people smile because they are happy or are they happy because they are smiling.
 
I submit that the answer is yes to all of those questions at both ends.  If it is true that we are happy because we whistle or smile or sing then why not start out every day with one of those three or all three if we are really into happiness?
 
One of the bonuses of doing one or all three is that generally it will produce a smile and happiness in others.

Try smiling, try whistling and try singing right out loud.  It might just help your digestion system too.

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... in fairly heavy traffic it suddently dawned on me...

I got up early for an early appointment with my eye doctor and as I was driving east on Interstate 40 in fairly heavy traffic it suddenly dawned on me that many of the drivers around me were taking a trip that they take five days a week…week in and week out and they report to work on time and do the same sort of work every day under supervision.  It suddenly hit me how lucky I have been in my lifetime.  I used to drive to work like that and report to work at 8 AM in Detroit, Michigan but I have not had a job where I had to do that since late in 1960.  I was transferred from Detroit to Battle Creek, Michigan and I didn’t have a boss within a hundred miles.  I could fairly well work my own hours and I must admit that I set my work schedule to suit all of the other things I had going on in my life for the final ten years from 1973-1983 when I went out on my own as a speaker-writer. 
 
I can’t explain the tremendous feeling of independence that I felt as I drove along that highway that morning.  I just bet that most of our readers have something going for them like that in their lives; something special about their jobs that they fail to recognize. Maybe they get to take home three free chickens a week or perhaps they get a new computer each year. Maybe it is a car, comp tickets, something so before you go home tonight, look around you and thank your lucky stars for whatever it is special about your job that you have been overlooking. Why not visit my blog and tell me about your special perk or situation?

I guess it is easier to kick somebody when they are down.

Sometimes when I get mad at a big corporation I forget that there are a lot of fantastic, wonderful, caring people who work for that organization.  Perhaps you have done that in the past too.  I remember doing some presentations for Exxon at Baytown back when we were all upset with that oil spill in Alaska.  I got pretty close to some wonderful people who worked for Exxon and I shared some of their sadness because of the way people in their community were treating them as individuals because they happened to work for an organization that was temporarily in disfavor by the world it seemed.  I wrote a little poem about Exxon People and shared it with my audiences.  As I recall it, someone asked for a copy and it went to the local newspaper and even one of the preachers at a local church included the poem in his sermon.

I guess it is easier to kick somebody when they are down.  I just want to say that I have worked for BP in the past and I have met some wonderful, caring, dedicated people who work hard doing their job and make important contributions to the community in which they live.  This must be a tough time for all of them and I want them to know that they are in my prayers. I wish BP success in the future because, lets face it, if they are to make good on their promises to those who suffer then they will have to be around to fulfill them.

... and just what have I learned

Eighty One years old today and just what have I learned in that time? Not a whole lot.  I can’t understand the war in Afghanistan.  I can’t figure out how BP did such a rotten job of safety nor can I understand why they can’t figure out a way to stop the flow. Maybe they heard God say “Fill her up.” and they figured He meant The Gulf of Mexico. I can’t figure out what happened to our banking system in this nation.  I don’t understand our national debt in such a land of plenty.  And how have we bred a nation full of unhappy grabbers and getters when they cannot understand that happiness and a sense of achievement comes in giving?  I don’t understand medicine in America and truly suspect that it is too often based on greed. When I witness bigotry and hatred and prejudice and deception I sometimes wonder why we haven’t yet discovered the cure for these and so many other of our woes and that is simply having love for our fellow human beings.

And what have others learned from me in those eighty one years?  Not much, I hate to admit. But truth is, I have learned that unfortunately we really don’t learn much from others. We must learn mostly from trial and error and unfortunately, humankind as a whole does not learn from its own experiences.  If they did we would have no war in Afghanistan, no problems with our banking system, no oil floating around towards our beaches, we’d have a fantastic medical system that works and all of us would love our fellow man.

I just hope I learn something today and that it sticks with me because I sure have a lot to learn yet. I really hope that we all learn something  in the year ahead.

. Perhaps then I will be able to land one of those new CZAR jobs they are creating in Washington, D.C.

Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what we know that gets us in trouble, its what we know that just ain’t so.” I can’t figure how I survived in my career as a professional speaker for so long not knowing all that I do.  It just seems that the more that I learn, the less I really know.  If I keep this up for much longer I will probably get to the point where I know absolutely nothing.  Perhaps then I will be able to land one of those new CZAR jobs they are creating in Washington, D.C.  All you need to know about any subject is to be able to discuss a subject in the form of sound bits for the cameras.  Just look wise and utter quotable sound bites..  There must be a new specialization  in the works at one of our finer Universities on that subject, Sound Bites 101. The Art of saying nothing, quickly,  with great authority.

Safety is #1...

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Looks good too in print on the list of corporate objectives but it doesn’t bring in those multi-million dollar bonuses to Corporate presidents or CEO’s..  Cutting costs, making profits, paying dividends, and furthering your own career are factors to figure into that #1 Priority and quite often it turns out that safety is just a six letter word meaning nothing.  In these past sixty two years I have brought home checks from many of the best and the worst safety performers in the world.  I presented in a tent surrounded by a thousand oil pumps and I’ve worked at nuclear sites. I went to the farthest point in America that you can drive a truck and basked on wonderful Florida beaches for the United States Air Force. I’ve worked in a jungle town for Hali-Burton too, that was in Tabasco, Mexico.   I’ve traveled to fifty states for some of the largest corporations in America and for some of the smallest too. Most of them had signs that said something like Safety is #1 and many of them demanded that workers attend safety meetings with no pay on their own time just to show their employers that they cared about their jobs and wanted to keep them.  Many figured you couldn’t shut down or slow down an operation for something as insignificant as a safety meeting. So many of them held safety meetings that were mostly unattended because those in charge did not even let it be know that a meeting was being conducted. My heart bled when I heard that a Marine who had just returned from a battle zone was not invited to a meeting and he died at the exact spot I had talked about doing exactly what I had warned about just hours earlier at that meeting.  Something else was more important.

The next time you say that Safety is #1 take a good look at what you are saying and then perhaps you’d feel more honest if you say something like, “Safety is #5 or #6 or #7.”  Then I challenge you to do something to make Safety really #1 at your place.
 
Update…June 15th, Government officials raise estimate of oil spewing from a well in the Gulf of Mexico to 35,000-60,000 barrels per day. Surprise!  Surprise!  They will soon be renaming it The Gulf of Oil.Stay tuned for one honest report.  None so far.