The Selfie Knows All (Part 2)

Ed. note: If this post looks a little familiar, it ran two years ago with the graduation of our first grandchild. We are blessed with 17 and this is proudly number 2. The message, however, remains vital forever and a day. Education, which should be a universal opportunity, always pays rich dividends.

Have a look at 863 of tomorrow's leaders. There are more than 40,000 high schools in the United States that graduated students this year. This is a Texas school shown in the 2015 selfie taken by its Valedictorian.

Joe photo-bombed by brother Luke

There... on the left, about 5th row from the back, that's the 52tnd President of the United States. She's sitting next to the guy with a beard. And on the right, 8th row, is the one who changes the world with an invention that assures even the poorest countries, potable water. Then there's the one who will help colonize Mars... and the mechanical whiz who invents the smallest, safest battery with the most power that runs for a year.

There are those who will break new grounds in ways never before imagined--those who go on to school and those who choose a different path--and all, we hope, who will enjoy happy, productive lives. High school graduates are a fairly healthy cross-section of us... and to these graduates and the rest of us, the abundance of hope rides high.

All are given life advice on how to do it right. The best seems to be simple and pure. Here are a few favorites:

• "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. You are the one who’ll decide where to go." - Dr. Seuss

• "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” - JK Rowling

• "Now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art." - Neil Gaiman

• "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

• "If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." -Bette Reese

• "Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. " -Will Rogers

• "We don't stop going to school when we graduate." -Carol Burnett 

 And you in the lower half of the graduating class... you may have the greatest dream of all:

 "To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States." - George W. Bush

But most important, you matter:

"If you think that no one knows you are alive, try missing a couple of payments." Earl Wilson



You count big-time, graduates. It's your turn.  Please take care of us... and your children too.

Who doesn't like spaghetti? What? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!

Look closely... that is spaghetti (originally called macaroni as were all pastas in the 19th century) hanging to air-dry in a macaroni restaurant in Naples, Italy in the late 1800s. Sanitation was less than desirable and forks were unheard of for the street people who literally ate macaroni ate by the handfulls as a staple. Meat and vegetables were an expensive food, only for the wealthy. 

The pasta-eaters of Naples were a major tourist attraction of that time, written up in guide books of the city. Restaurants would put out dishes for the beggars to attract a crowd and sometimes, tourists would "buy for the house" just to see the scrambling for food and the show of eating 'Naples style.'

Pasta was to be swallowed hot from the water in a single, uninturrupted mouthful using both hands and pausing only to clear the esophagus. Red sauce, meat balls and other toppings and additions came later. So what could be wrong than to feed the hungry and delight the onlookers at the same time?

This, of course, was before restaurant scoring which is good because negative numbers might drive off the customers.

While Naples had a reputation for the finest of macaroni, the working poor and beggars got only the cheapest flour, sometimes mixed with dirt to stretch ingredients. If available at the time, beef fat was added to the water for some flavoring. Nonetheless, it still filled the bellies of the hungry who often lived to ripe young ages.

Legend has it that Marco Polo brought macaroni back from China in the 12th century but Italians find that hard to accept, thinking they were born with tomato sauce in their blood. Want proof? Try ordering chow mein lasagna next time you're in a Chinese restaurant and see what you get.

Side note to authenticate pasta expertise: All four of my grandparents immigrated through Ellis Island from Italy and my parents were first generation American born... so I guess genetics made me a pasta expert and a gourmet "pasta from scratch-to-the-table in less-than-an-hour" specialty chef.

Things That Amaze Me Most: Part VIII, Us Humans

 

This was my blog post on March 12, 2011--more than 6 years ago. Still blows my mind. As I told you before, there are a number of things/events/emotions that absolutely blow-my-mind because they are so introspectively amazing and give me a deeper sense of awe. So I made a list of the things that amaze me most... some big, some small, some acts, some things... but all, in my mind, amazing.  So far:

Part I:    THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Part II:   BIG NUMBERS
Part III: THE YOUNG: Babies, toddlers and teens
Part IV:  LAUGHTER: A peek into the soul
Part V:   NATURE: Her splendor and fury
PART VI: THE POWER OF 1
PART VII: THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS


PART VIII: US HUMANS

Big, small, short, tall-- from a single cell embryo to Troy Jackson... who just died at 38. Troy was a basketball player... a 'classic' big man who could handle the ball--and look at how he could handle it. He was 6'10" tall and weighed as much as 500 lbs... or Shaq O'Neil who wears a size 23 shoe.

 Or... the World's Tallest man - Bao Xishun (7ft 7") or... the World's smallest adult, He Pingping (2ft 4").  How the heck did that all happen?

Funny thing is, we all started (with few exceptions-- in vitro fertilization, donor sperm or egg, Mary, mother of God, etc.) the same way. And if you don't know what that way is, then you'd better finally have that talk with mom and dad.

In any case, this is what the initial courtship  looks like... and yes, it is a difficult first date but well worth a few seconds to see how your mom and dad created you, exclusively.

Aww...The new baby. He/she has mom's eyes... and grandpa's sloping forehead, and cousin Ernie's long, tapered, pool-playing fingers... er, no fingers yet... but just you wait.

It is absolutely mind-blowing INCREDIBLE! From a single cell to... you and me, with all of our complexities, foibles and personalities. And the reason Baby Blue... or Pink, will look like us is that he/she has our genetic imprint... the heredity coding that says if your second toe is longer than your big toe, so will your baby's be... and if that big nose comes from grandpa's side of the family, baby's will look Italian too. The hair, the intelligence, the health, both good and bad, will all come from mom and dad and beyond.

As if that isn't enough, just imagine what we have learned to help us through life... all the technical, medical, psychological and social advances (and detractions) that build from generation to generation. Heck, our great-grandparents could have easily died in childbirth, or from appendicitis, or a bad tooth-ache, as many did! We even watched television in black and white, for God's sake. And we have, for better or worse, adapted to it all. 

Whether we are born here of there, of this race or that, big or small, male or female, we have a commonality to our heirs and one another:

If you are an Adam and Eve fan, then hello brother, hello sister.
If you go more for evolution, then shake hands with me, you big ape.
If you feel there is a place for both, I'm your man, just like him, her, it.


OK... are you ready for the moral of this story? We are all linked and dependent on one another... we just all haven't come to the point of accepting that as a human race. We still hate, show envy and prejudice. We still ignore the human rights and needs of others. We still kill and mistreat. The Golden Rule has nothing on us.

We can do better. We have to, because every moment of every day, there are more of us than ever before--5 times more people now than in 1900-- and we are all living in the same house as we always have... the one we call earth.


One last thought about that "house:" A mom tells of the conversation she had with her daughter... and the simple wisdom of a child that we often forget as we age.

Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling.  I chuckled and asked, “Why?”

She replied, “So you can help me save the planet.”
  
I chuckled again and asked, “And why do you want to save the planet?”
  
 “Because that’s where I keep all my stuff.”

(Thanks to Marc and Angel Hack Life website.) 

Is there a lesson here?

IMMORTALITY LIVES! (So how is that headline for redundancy? But wait, it's true in the oddest sense.)

Henrietta Lacks

Have you read the book or seen the new movie, The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks? Rebecca Skloot wrote the true story in her 2010 best-selling novel and Oprah stars masterfully as Lacks'

Oprah as Lacks daughter, Deborah

daughter in the movie version.

Just a month ago, I blogged "The 'God' Molecule: Heaven can wait, I'm going to live forever and ever." . It was all about humankind's quest for immortality and how Silicon Valley billionaires and scientists are actually believing it is possible to live forever, in one form or another. (Really! That's what they think and they are putting their money where their mouth is to prove it.)

When I blogged about immortality, I hadn't thought of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at age 31, who had beaten them to the punch. Lacks'  cell line, taken from her biopsied tumor, are still alive and multiplying 66 years later! It has been proven these cells can live in the lab and give science the essence of a living person to aid medical science, forever immortal.

In fact, those cells are regarded as invaluable in their use as a living cell line to test against all diseases in search of clues to discovery of cures. The hela cell line has been credited with advances in chemotherapy drugs, the polio vaccine, gene mapping, stem cell research, HPV vaccine and in-vitro fertilization to name a few successes. And their extensive use offers a continuing promise of more. Her cells are working and reproducing in virtually every medical laboratory seeking answers.

Rebecca Skloot

As author Skloot wrote and became part of the story in her investigative reporting, it is more than Lacks' immortal cells. It was a difficult story to obtain over years because of Lacks' family's objections. It was Lack's daughter Deborah who was the key to overcoming those objections. In pursuing the truth, Skloot became a true friend to the Lacks' extended family.

Lacks' cells--known world-wide as the "HeLa cell line"--continue to be offered for valid scientific research, were harvested without Lacks' knowledge or permission, a practice later deemed acceptable by the Supreme Court. It took Lacks' family 24 years before they, and the world, knew the donors' name.

Today, Lacks' ancestors receive their only compensation from a fund Skloot set up for their benefit. They have never received compensation, though money has been made in marketing the cells by others. In fact, the Lacks family at that time couldn't even get health care.

As Skloot later said, "We hear a lot about science versus religion, but what I saw over an over was Deborah's faith keeping her anchored and opening her up to learning about the science. She really believed her mother was brought back to life in these cells to take care of people, like and angel, and that was so rooted in her faith. That let her overcome a lot of her fears, like going to see the cells for the first time. " 

The enormous medical interest in the HeLa cells was seen at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Bookstore (a great bookstore with many name authors visiting) when Sklook was promoting her book in 2010. The overflowing crowd, made up greatly by the medical profession from the areas' major hospitals and medical community, was larger than any other in the bookstore's history.

It just goes to show again, how some of us continue to live in one way or another to contribute to the world, far beyond what anyone could have imagined. Some, like Henrietta Lacks, live famously for the good, often without their knowledge. Others live infamously for the hate, sorrow and ruin they left in their wake. That's life.

PS: As a writer myself, the movie is a good preview in what a reporter sometimes must do to rightly and accurately get a difficult story that needs to be told.

If all the world had a laugh track, nothing would be funnier than elevator music... Aunt Minnie's funeral... the Cubs losing... slipping on a banana peel (wait, that's already funny)...

Nothing makes me feel more duped than to listen to the laugh track behind the Big Bang Theory or even I Love Lucy and think laughing was my idea.

On the other hand, if the whole world had a laugh track, Donald Trump would have us laying in the aisles. (I know, not funny but I... ha ha ha... just can't... ha ha ha... help myself.)

So after all these years of bitter--but hilariously funny--resentment over this fake, not even realistic laughter that starts at the same moment and stops as if someone put a giant hand over the audience's collective mouth, sometimes at the right spot, most often trying to make something unfunny, funny, I sought to understand more.

Well, I did. Here's the skinny:

Charles "Charlie" Douglass, a sound engineer with CBS Radio after World War II, is the man who invented the laugh track. So who can get too mad about a guy who helped develop shipboard radar systems for the Navy, no doubt saving many lives.

Before television--in 1948 there were only 100,000 televisions in the United States--audiences often experienced comedy listening to the radio or watching live performances as part of a studio audience. Live audiences didn't always laugh in the right places or at the correct moment. So when the show was broadcast, crowd reactions often went amiss or just weren't that funny. It was a problem for the producers and listeners/watchers alike.

Want to see what I mean? Watch just a few minutes of this Big Bang Theory episode filmed on a sound stage with no audience and see what you think. The laugh track or sound augmentation has been stripped away. Not much fun, right?

If a joke did not get the desired chuckle, Douglass added appropriate laughter. If a live audience laughed too long, he gradually muted the laughter. This was known in the industry as "sweetening" to get a "just right" response.

Comedian Milton Berle

Comedian Milton Berle, listening to a post-production editing session, felt a joke he told fall flat. After Douglas inserted a laugh, Berle said, "See? I told you it was funny."

 

Soon, Douglass was simulating the audience response for Bewitched, The Munsters, Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch and more. While this augmentation was controversial at the onset, it soon became standard practice. His "laff box" was kept secret at first. It actually was a box, about 2 feet tall and operated like an organ. The device was padlocked so his technique could not be known. Few in the industry ever witnessed Douglass at work. The 'laff box" actually turned up in a 2010 episode of Antiques Roadshow to be valued at $10,000.

Today, it is a digital device about the size of a laptop with a great many more laughs and other human sounds. The technique has evolved... though sometimes, not for the better because no matter how much laughter, some things are still turkeys.

But I am now a believer of the need--though not every imposed laugh track fits my taste or worse, works to milk a lame situation--laughter is worth it. It still bothers me to be instructed when to laugh. But then again, laughter is always worth it.  

Wonder where the quote "Laugh and the world laughs with you... " comes from? Read on and be in awe.

It was poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, born in 1850, who knew, even that far back, what is really important in life. Her poem "Solitude"  resonates through time and seems to have special relevance today. Here's her first few lines for you sluggards who will read no further, but do yourself a favor and read the whole poem below and take it to heart. It's worth it.

Solitude

Related Poem Content Details

BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;

Sigh, it is lost on the air;

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

Grieve, and they turn and go;

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

Be sad, and you lose them all,—

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a large and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Are you smarter than you think or dumber than others around you? HINT: The answer is yes.

I used to write a popular magazine column about nothing. It was just my musings of life and items that caught the general interests of my readers. One of it's best features was a section I called "Dumb Crooks." That section drew the most mail from all over the world. Seems people just love to hear and share true stories that are funny and hard to believe.

There was a story about a man who, without a mask or any disguise, robbed two banks. When quickly apprehended, he was incredulous as to how the police recognized him. He was under the belief that if he rubbed his face with lemon juice, it would make him invisible to surveillance cameras. It didn't.

Dumb crooks most often don't know they are dumb. But then, many times, neither do some of us. That condition--being not as smart as we think we are--is known scientifically as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

As Wikipedia simplifies it, "The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher that it

really is... Research also indicated high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others."


The pattern of over-estimating (or underestimating) competence was seen in diverse skills such as reading comprehension, practicing medicine, strategic game playing and driving. In comprehensive tests with undergraduate students in psychology courses at Cornell University, Dunning and Kruger examined student self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the students were asked to estimate their own rank in class. Most noted was that students who were about to get Ds and Fs thought they had turned in B or better work.

"Across four studies," the authors found that "participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performances and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd."

Also learned: students of high ability tended to underestimate their relative competence. Participants who found tasks to be easy, erroneously presumed that the tasks also must be easy for others thus assuming others were as competent, if not more competent, than themselves.

The conclusion: The smartest don't give themselves higher marks. The less learned don't know that they are and make statements they regard as just as profound. Belief of the listeners is whatever it is by who is listening.

Best news though,  a follow-up study suggests that grossly incompetent students improved their ability to estimate their rank after minimal tutoring in the skills they had previously lacked, regardless of the improvement gained in skills.

See, education is always good.

Isn't it sad that in the United States, we chose to prioritize more dollars to punish and incarcerate criminals, build walls and prioritize the wants of our congressmen who spend to get reelected than to educate youth at every level under all circumstances for the enrichment of our future.

NOTE: There are other writings such as THE STORY OF  STUPIDITY: A History of Western  Idiocy from the Days of Greece to the Moment You Saw this Book, by James F. Welles, Ph.D. that are interesting and/or fun to read as we learn why we are often so gullible, but that's today when all of us seem to be living in a stupider world and believing in most things we see in social media and hear elsewhere.


 Special Bonus section:

Dumb Crooks from my past

     In Chicago, a man brandished a gun as he held up a store. As he pulled the magazine out of his gun to show the store manager it was loaded, the gun discharged, shooting the crook’s finger completely off. The gunman regaining his composure, fled with a television set and five bucks

      Police used the finger to get a print that helped find and convict the robber.

     Of all the great dumb crook stories, the strangest is of Yugoslavian Siamese twins Ennio and Mario Borovac. The 35-year-old brothers were joined at the stomach and chest and shared vital organs. Unfortunately, they also shared breathing space, and Mario had bad breath.

     Ennio tried and tried to tell Mario to do something about his breath, but Mario simply wouldn’t brush his teeth! Mario finally got tired of the lectures and slapped Ennio in the face. Ennio plotted his revenge. He got a gun and shot his brother. Twenty minutes later, Ennio bled to death.

     The police belatedly charged Ennio with first-degree murder–although shooting his brother was technically a suicide.

     In a bumbling rampage that covered three square miles of southwest Houston, Texas, and lasted only an hour, a crook later nicknamed “Lucky,” robbed a McDonald’s, ran to a nearby auto parts store and took a hostage, shot at a police officer, released the hostage and grabbed a second hostage with a car, forced the him to drive to a condominium complex, kicked open a door, got into a gunfight with one resident, tried to steal another car but couldn’t get past the complex’s electronic security gate, ran to a nearby Dairy Queen, tried to commandeer a meat truck, was beaten and disarmed by the truck driver, escaped by running into a residential area and began jumping fences, landed in one backyard where he was attacked by a terrier, jumped another fence and landed in a yard where he was attacked by a pair of German shepherds, managed to get away from the German shepherds but was taken into custody by police and charged with six felonies.

     Still think you’re having a bad day?

     One dumb crook is the good driver who was leading police on a high-speed chase through suburbia. Skillfully, the police stayed on his tail despite the crook’s twists and turns and daring evasive action.

     How were police able to stay with him? Good driving? Luck? Maybe a combination of both— and the fact that the escapee, like every good driver, properly used his turning signals for each and every 100-mph turn.

     An East Coast burglar loves shiny shoes. Sometimes he polishes his shoes two or three times a day. He was convicted after evidence showed he paused during a burglary long enough to shine his shoes, leaving his can of shoe polish and a personalized rag behind.

When asked by his public defender, “You almost have a fetish about your shoes don’t you?” the man answered, “Yes, I do.”

    If the shoe fits…

     A prisoner spent two days “highlighting” his body (private parts and all) with yellow marker pens in an attempt to convince his warden that he had a severe case of jaundice. He wanted a transfer to a hospital where he could escape more easily.

     He almost got away with it until one night a guard caught him coloring his face.

     A man who robbed a liquor store with a shotgun told the clerk to give him the bottle of scotch he saw on the back counter. The clerk refused because he didn’t believe the crook was 21. The robber quickly whipped out his driver’s license to prove the fact. The clerk, satisfied, put the scotch in a bag, and the robber left happy–until the police showed up at the address listed on the driver’s license and arrested him.

     A Filipino man must have learned his crime skills by watching Wyle E. Coyote. On a flight to Manila, he donned a ski mask and swimming goggles, then pulled a gun and a hand grenade announcing he was hijacking the plane. When the pilot convinced him that the plane was low on fuel, the hijacker decided to simply rob the passengers. With $15,000 in loot, he ordered the pilot to lower the plane to 6,500 feet. He strapped on a homemade parachute and told the attendant to open the door. The hijacker had trouble getting through the door with his parachute on, so the attendant helped by pushing him out. Before leaping, he had pulled the grenade’s pin and mistakenly tossed it back into the plane. Clutching the live grenade to his chest, he blissfully sailed back to earth. Well, almost back, that is.

*Reprinted with permission.

THE 'GOD" MOLECULE: Heaven can wait. I'm going to live forever and ever.

 
As the story goes, a bottomless cup of coffee and Olive Garden's endless breadsticks got together to gloat about their immortality.



So now that coffee and breadsticks have it made, what about us? Well, the good news is that science and Silicon Valley with its billions and billions of dollars are working toward one of the grandest human feats of all time--immortality. For Real!

Progress so far: mice and certain worms in the lab can be treated to double their life spans and more with a breakthrough discovery of how the 'God molecule' found in mice and humans, can be used to bypass the typical aging process. Happy 200th birthday Mickey and Minnie! Sorry worm, you just got eaten by a bird.

But, you say, mice are not humans. Ah yes, I knew there was a catch.

This is true stuff however, taken seriously by many intelligent, moneyed people used to doing incredible things. The April 3, 2017 The New Yorker carries the story, SILLICON VALLEY'S QUEST TO LIVE FOREVER: Can billions' of dollars worth of high-tech research succeed in making death optional? And during a six-hour drive home from a visit with my daughter and family, I also listened to an NPR program discussing the broader issue. It was surreal and mind-blowing!

This whole thing got its jump-start because of NASA's search for a work-around so that future astronauts on a many-month journey to Mars may avoid the deadly potential of cancer-causing radiation en-route.

the article tells of a recent meeting of scientists and rich people that are into this, at T.V. producer Norman Lear's house. Immortality was the agenda. Actress Goldie Hawn kicked it off when she asked Liz Blackburn, a Nobel Prize winner for her work in genetics, this question: "I've been told about a molecule ... that helps the health of a cell.... Some in Hollywood call it 'the God molecule.' " 

A doctor who runs a health care hedge fund and is a big financial contributor to the immortality cause offered  "... the idea that aging is plastic, that it's encoded. If something is encoded, you can crack the code. If you can crack the code, you can hack the code!"

The founder of  a biotech firm which intends to grow new organs from people's DNA said "Clearly it is possible, through technology, to make death optional."

One attendee has already commissioned a backup version of his wife... a 'mindclone' robot named Bina48, so that should her enhanced aged body fail, her brain could be uploaded to 'the cloud' then downloaded to her avatar. (I already see an age old problem: Help! I've forgotten the password!)

Also noted is that by 2020, for the first time, there will be more people on Earth over the age of sixty-five than under the age of Five. But the unresolved question posed going forward: Is it "Death is optional" or "Death will just have to wait?"

So here's the take-away: If immortality or an elongated life is doable--and these very rich and able people believe it is--Silicon Valley culture and lots and lots of money will make it happen. We once thought TV's1970's Six Million Dollar Man--augmented with a body-full of robotic parts to keep him ageless and strong--to be sci-fi. Then we are actually far, far beyond that premise as something maybe possible.

That however does beg the questions: did Maude, of the movie Harold and Maude, waste a perfectly good body when she died herself in at a mere 80 and has Shirley MacLaine already been there

Shirley MacLaine

and back a handful of times?

But hey, if money and brains can get there, who are we to argue... except of course, the morality and spirituality of the whole thing. If you finally die at the age of 245, is there a heaven for avatars?

Godspeed... or not?

These are the richest people in the world... and below them are the poorest:

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are the two richest people in the world, according to Forbes Magazine. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are the third and fifth richest. Adding Larry Ellison, David Koch, Charles Koch and Larry Ellison gives America eight the top ten fabulously wealthy at just a few bucks short of half-trillion dollars.

These are the poorest people in the world. Two-thirds of the world's poorest people live in just five countries, according to a new World Bank study--India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is somewhat understandable that India and China, the two largest countries in the world with 2.5 billion people, would have a large number of poor. The U.S. is third largest with a mere 340 million.
 
The top one percent of the rich have more wealth than all the rest of us in the world. (If any of you mega-billionaires and millionaires are reading this, excuse me, I didn't mean you.)

In The United States, even though we have eight of the top ten richest.. a great number of us below that incredibly rich level are well off by any standard, a greater number pretty OK, some sort of OK and about 14.5 percent of us have to exist below the poverty level--not OK at all.  

Those 45 million in poverty are living, breathing and surviving, trying to do better like the rest of us but with unique problems and no means to address them. These are the disadvantaged where the stairs to an upper level don't come down far enough for them to climb.

Awww! Poor me.

I was poor once... not dirt poor or desperately poor as many are... just regular poor. And that was in a most different time under most different circumstances.

My family didn't have much, but my sister and I didn't know what we might have been missing. We had food and lived in a small, variable rent house owned by my grandparents. Rent was $20/month when we had it, $0 to minus $20 (they paid us) when the situation required. Living close to grandma and grandpa was like having a fairy godmother and godfather. We lived  in a lower class part of town at a time before two-stall garages, second cars, electronics beyond a light switch, television, lawn tractors, outdoor grills, kitchen gadgets, snow blowers, etc. so we had less to covet.  Internet, cordless phones, video games... what were those?

Simple is not possible today. The pressure is on to live to survive if you are poor. The chasm between high income and little income continues to grow wider as cost-of-living rises without earnings to match for the poor. And to answer at least one critic, many of those in poverty do have cell phones because today, that functions as a lifeline that circumstances demand. That does not equate to being able to afford basic health insurance or take even one step closer without two backward. It's not "Either this or that." It's "How can I and my family survive at this level."

The poor are most often minorities, the disadvantaged and the discriminated against. They are often broken families with mothers and/or fathers working multiple low paying jobs. The are mostly non-college educated and sometimes, lacking a high school diploma. They live in the worse part of town in the worse conditions and often can't help themselves because the steps to a higher level don't start that low.

They live more often in the high crime areas, often circumstantially of their plight. But here's where those lowest share something with those highest. Some-- a minority thank goodness--game the system at both status extremes. One end is more desperate and violent than the other. If there is one thing money does buy, it is a life cushion.

If being powerful can corrupt, then being powerless is it's match.

If you have read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, seen the movie or know the story, you know of Jean Valjead, the French peasant who stole a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child and paid dearly for his act of survival without empathy. It's not easy being poor.

It's as if we believe some of us are more important than others and taking care of Number One doesn't go any further than ourselves and those like us. That's not a world we can live in. As those below us  grow proportionally less well off, (the richest gained 14 percent in wealth last year) the gap between haves and have-nots becomes almost unbridgeable.

We are governed by the rich, the almost rich and the average rich. Does trickle down mean it is their responsibility to get richer... not that there is anything wrong with that. But can those with great power see beyond partisan politics and winning to realize their responsibility runs far deeper than that?

 

For those who view a future for our children... and our nation, if it's not win-win, then it's lose-lose by default.

There are actually two golden rules commonly acknowledged:

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• He who has the gold, rules.

Which is it to be for us?

PS: That said, thank goodness for the rich. The moneyed can and often do act incredibly benevolent. and by their actions, they do help us all. It's not the money we have... or don't have. It's how lives are lived and action taken that makes a nation.

If President Harry Truman , who started his political career as a haberdasher no less, became a symbol of responsibility and action, then, we can ask ourselves, just where does the buck stop?

I've been scared of gorillas for some time now.

Call it silly but    I am  gorilla-phobic.

Yeah, I know... a silly thing. Gorillas are kind and sweet and love their babies and live as families and can beat Godzilla and are highly misunderstood and their breath stinks and when they growl they rattle bones and they can crush you with one hand and tear you to pieces and ... wait! I am sweating profusely, sobbing emotionally and curling into a fetal position. I am scared of gorillas.

Shows you what bad King Kong and Mighty Joe Young movies can do to a young child's mind. (FYI: There have actually been 18 King Kong movies, counting animation, starting in 1933 to the current King Kong: Skull Island. For fun and comparison, here's that 1933 trailer with a caveat--you may have to watch a 15 second movie promo first) Oh, I'm not nuts about Godzilla either.

Phobias are funny. What terrifies one of us causes others to ask if we are joking. Scared of heights? Who is scared of heights? Snakes? Spiders? Flying? Germs? Birds? Water (unless your feet are set in cement by the mob)? Gorillas?

"Are you kidding me?" you brave ones might say. But an accepted theory says that if you can just face your fears--with help, steely nerve and guts or sometimes even by accident--you have a fighting chance to overcome them.


True story: Years ago, my company had an annual celebration of autumn for employees and their

Obviously fake gorilla

families... 3-legged races, balloon animals (but not gorlllas), snow cones, cotton candy, picnic food, goofy prizes for the kids, etc. It was always a welcomed success. But one year I thought it would be fun to rent an an animated mechanical gorilla holding a sign that said PICNIC, THIS WAY with an arrow pointing toward our picnic area. It was a good sight gag that everyone enjoyed.

After the picnic was over and everyone had gone home, I loaded the life-size faux gorilla in my station wagon and drove it to the office where it would be safe until its return the following Monday.

So I had this misguided brainstorm... what if I positioned the gorilla just inside the entry door so the first person arriving on Monday would see it as soon as he/she walked in. Great gag, right? I thought so at the time.

Immediately after putting the gorilla where it would most scare someone walking in, I proceeded to my car, parked just 50 feet from the office door. Then, remembering something that I left on my desk, I went back to get it.

Not 30-seconds after I placed the gorilla, I opened the door and REALLY, ALMOST SCARED MYSELF TO DEATH. I once reached to tighten a spark plug under the hood of a running car (not recommended) and it literally knocked me backward against the garage wall. Lucky that's all it did. Well, this gorilla thing was worse than that. Honest. Just think how much worse it could have been if I had left it plugged in looking even more menacing.

And yes, lest I be responsible for a heart attack, I moved the monster to my office area, laid it flat and covered it with a rug. I left a second time, still shaking. So now you know my gorilla story.

(An even better ending though, would have been if, on Monday, I noticed the gorilla was gone, the office torn apart,  slippery banana peels laying everywhere and I slipped and fell on my you-know-what just as a custard pie, thrown from the kitchen by a wooley beast hit me in the face. But that didn't happen, ruining what might have been a terrific movie sequence making the Three Stooges and Soupy Sales happy in their graves.)

I do, however, have a tip for you if  you are trying to stop being frightened by certain things. Here is a real How-to-guide for knocking those fears in the head (unless you have a hit-in-the-head-phobia).

Ed Note: Yeah, this is a lame post but when you haven't blogged for a few weeks, you just have to jump back into the pool to jump-start the process in your mind. (Did I say jump back in the pool? I'm really not scared of gorillas except for the one at the office but I do have a respectable fear of the water being an ashamed non--swimmer who has foolishly tried to water ski and have actually dived from a low board mysteriously failing to come up like they do on television. Not much grace in wildly flailing your arms to a cheering crowd. See, it didn't work for me either.)