Quote of the Week

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You’ve made your bed, now go bounce on it.
               - Peter Scott

Camaraderie

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A few weeks ago, I participated in a 45 mile ocean race with 6 other crew members and a 33-foot boat.  There were 10 other competitors in our class.  One of them - a very fast boat-had a handicap rating, which meant we had to beat them by 20 minutes (in a 61/2 hour race).

We did our best and did a good job with tactics and sail changes.  But our handicap was such that this just wasn’t enough.

A big boat from another class was right behind me, bearing down hard, some 13 miles from the finish line.  My tactician said “Okay, now I’m going to teach you something new.”  He had me maneuver the boat so they’d go under me (meaning I was between the wind and the other boat) so I would not slow down in their wind shadow.  Once they almost passed me, and I turned the boat down to catch their wake.  Evidently, this is the “on the water” version of what bicyclists do when they follow another closely - it actually makes you go faster!  And it worked, because, suddenly, I was going a knot faster.  The waves were big, fast, and furious.  It took a lot of strength on my part to keep my boat directly behind the bigger boat and stay in their wake.  I stayed in his wake for 8 miles and 1 hour.  When the wind died down a bit, his boat took off, and I was back to just being a small boat in the race. 

The guys in front on my boat were getting soaked and when one more huge wave actually broke over the boat, I too was soaked.  One of them leaned back and said sympathetically, “Oh, did you get wet Doc?”  I said “Yes,” as I spit out salt water.  As if orchestrated, they all turned and said simultaneously:  “Awwwwwwwwww.”  It was hilarious, and it felt great.  The team was working together, kidding each other in the heat of battle, and I just loved it!

When we docked, we all got off the boat extremely wet and all body parts hurting.  We all moaned and groaned as I said “Whose stupid idea was this?”  Again, they all turned, laughing, and pointed at me.  We hit the restrooms and cleaned up, and then went out to dinner to celebrate a job well done…done as a team, and done with humor.

We were at the restaurant toasting each other and laughing and throwing food down with passion, when we realized we were happy and didn’t even know if we had won anything in the race or not.  That was the best part - that we didn’t need a “win” to enjoy our camaraderie and our time out on the ocean.

It wasn’t until the next day we discovered we had won the race by (remember, this was a 45 mile race that took 6 1/2 hours)…..TWO SECONDS!  Bless that big boat’s wake!  We were all stunned at the result.  Whew!  But even without the win, we had a great time together facing the elements.

Friendship Should Not Be Unconditional

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I don’t subscribe to unconditional relationships, whether they are by blood, geography, gender, race, religion, or friendship.

Recently, I had a situation in my personal life that brought this concept to the fore.  I (and others) had gotten deeply involved with a lovely person who was in a destructive relationship.  When it broke up…again…we were all asked to be supportive, and we were (with phone calls, visits, dinner, etc.).  The relationships all deepened and then this person slipped way backward…again…into a morass of misery.  I communicated I was sad this had happened, and I was willing to resume our friendship after some time had passed, when the drama was no longer part of the equation.

I heard from this person again, and was informed the drama was indeed over…finally (one last burp, I guess).  This individual did communicate to me about being hurt that my friendship seemed conditional, when it was expected I would be there through stupid and smart behavior. 

I responded all relationships should be conditional - not “hair-trigger” conditional, but conditional nonetheless. I don’t want to be Mel Gibson’s friend, for example.  I am certainly willing to be supportive and helpful, but I don’t want to take up time in my life with yo-yo drama.  I consider the other individual has the responsibility to do the work to make themselves healthy and my support is there lovingly when that is, indeed, the case.  Getting one’s life on a healthy track is difficult, and I am certainly there to support my friends during that journey.  I am not there, however, when intentional, self-defeating steps are taken to get back into the problems.

This is the philosophy I espouse on the air.  Otherwise, giving support unconditionally is making oneself a patsy and/or a contributor to the ongoing drama and filling one’s life with unnecessary turmoil.

Relationships require the honor, integrity and effort of both individuals.  That should be the condition.

Mistakes?  Temporary stupidity?  All understandable.

Betrayal of support by giving into weakness?  Not so understandable.

You owe those who support you not to give into temptation or weakness, or you will lose the best of them.

Motivation or Bribe? That’s the Question.

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Here’s an interesting question regarding the timing of rewards as a factor in behavioral motivation:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

Going on a Shopping Diet

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How many times have you gone into your closet to choose something to wear, and even though your closet is stuffed with things (some still with the tags on them), you’ve stood there frustrated and yelled:  “But I don’t have anything to wear!!”

Imagine this:  you go to your closet to choose what to wear for the day, and you find only six items.  Does that make it easier?

That’s the premise behind a recent Web challenge at sixitemsorless.com - participants were to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in their closet (not counting underwear or accessories).  Nearly 100 people around the country and in Dubai and Bangalore, India took part in this experiment, with a variety of motives, including it being a way to cut back on unnecessary spending, a way to reject fashion trends, and an opportunity to show concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing was damaging the environment.

This experiment was billed as a kind of “shopping diet.”

Women, in particular, spend inordinate amounts of money each month on trendy (not classic), poorly made, cheap clothes, which are mostly made in Asia.  They’re disposable wardrobes paid for with precious income.

Check out your closet.  I’ll bet you have things you haven’t worn in years, or you have 10 pairs of jeans, when you only wear four of them regularly.

I used to be one of those women.  I gave away about a third of my clothes, saving jeweled jeans and leather jackets, because I wear those at public events.  I spend most of my time in T-shirts and stretch yoga pants, and when I go out, it’s usually in cowboy boots and a denim skirt.  “Dressing up” means I choose a blinged-out shirt over a plain one.  I will admit, however, to owning way too many Harley T-shirts and jackets, but that’s my one permitted weakness.

I don’t own trendy stuff at all.  For several years, those blousy tops that are made to look like maternity tops have been popular, but I’ve avoided them.  I don’t like being manipulated by an industry which is there to make billions off a pathetic desire to be “in fashion.”  Give me a Chanel suit any day - now that’s eternal class - although I don’t own one of those, either.

I suggest you rearrange your closet with ten pieces - shirts, pants, skirt, top, shorts - and check yourself out for a month.  Does anyone even notice?  Do you spend less time struggling with what to wear?  Do you find yourself more comfortable than you imagined?  Or has way too much of your being and identity been dependent upon how you think you look?  It’s an interesting self-examination.

I find myself more comfortable when I’m not wasting time and money on frequent trips to clothing stores.

Lately, since I’ve been scouring thrift stores for items to use for the purses I make (check out www.topdogcoffeebar.com), I found two denim skirts that, after figuring out how to transform them into purses) I decided to keep to wear myself.  One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure, and by buying at most thrift shops, you support charities as well.

Quote of the Week

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A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
               - Andre Maurois
                  French biographer, novelist and essayist
                  1885-1967

Soldier Who Leaked Documents Betrayed Our Country

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I was stunned last Sunday when I read that Private Bradley E. Manning, after taking solemn oaths to protect his country and his fellow soldiers, decided that he no longer personally liked the concept of America’s participation in relieving Afghanistan of the Taliban.  Based upon his mood, he allegedly released over 90,000 classified documents via the Internet to Julien Assange, who is the person behind WikiLeaks.

Mr. Assange released the documents to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel instead of to the world at once, because (as he is quoted as saying): “You’d think the bigger and more important the document is, the more likely it will be reported on, but that’s absolutely not true.  It’s about supply and demand.  Zero supply equals high demand; it has value.  As soon as we release the material, the supply goes to infinity, so the perceived value goes to zero.”

Isn’t that just stunning?  The value of the documents, according to WikiLeaks, is determined by the means of distribution and not by the content?  Is this some kind of media game for attention and power?

Let me first say that I believe in the value and courage of some whistleblowing, for example, when there’s concrete evidence that a company knew its product was dangerous and that they accepted the fact some people would die because they were looking at their bottom line, and it was cheaper to pay for the deaths than change the design of their product.  That situation has occurred - in the car industry, as you may remember - and that form of whistleblowing is specifically geared only toward saving human lives.

Pvt. Bradley Manning enlisted in the Army in 2007, and was working as an Army intelligence analyst, examining classified information.  This twenty-two year old decided on his own that US foreign policy was incorrect, and tracked down a former computer hacker in Sacramento, California named Adrian Lamo, who he thought would be a soul-less mate, and told him how he had downloaded the classified information: “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga,’” he told Lamo.  While pretending to sing along to Lady Gaga, Manning would actually be erasing the music from the CD and recording intelligence onto it instead.

A disgruntled pipsqueak with minimal social skills finally finds his power…putting his fellow soldiers and his country at risk.  Now, that’s being a man?

Adrian Lamo is the hero here.  Fearing that the soldier’s leaks could put American lives at risk, he went to the FBI.  “Had I not acted, I would have always wondered had I gotten someone killed,” Lamo said.  Adrian Lamo is an American hero. 

Adrian Lamo has received threats, including threats of death.  What??  I think he should be awarded the highest medal America gives to a civilian.  Talk to me about the hypocrisy of supporting Manning for so-called whistleblowing, but not Lamo.

Lamo reports Manning wanted Hillary Clinton to wake up and have a heart attack, and that Manning was trying to be an “army of one” and stop the war in Afghanistan, which Manning felt was unjust.  “He did so with the stated intention of disrupting United States’ foreign policy.”  Imagine…

Lamo said, “I don’t think that this is going to do us any good in terms of trying to build relationships and maintain relationships with our allies in the war on terror.”

Here’s more hypocrisy:  Julien Assange has WikiLeaks well insulated (which is sort of counter to his avowed position to make everyone’s “privacies” public, even if it puts lives at risk).  Key members of WikiLeaks are known only by their initials (”M,” for example) even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services.

Will Julien Assange - “Mr. WikiLeaks” - think positively about the whistleblower that leaks all his information and that of his network?  I don’t think so.

What infuriates me even more is this situation is not being received with a huge, national, shaking reaction by either major political party or any aspect of our news media!  None of the major players, including the so-called liberal mainstream media, nor pundits like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and none of our politicians on either side of the aisle have pitched their tents to deal with this egregious and evil assault on the military and the United States of America.  Why no ferocious outrage?  I’ve seen more attention paid to the stupid shenanigans of Lindsay Lohan.

Perhaps it’s because this is so big - bigger than Jane Fonda sitting, smiling, on a North Vietnamese tank, for the world-wide press.  This is the concerted attempt first of one lonely, maladjusted private to betray his country and his oaths, with little or no regard for the final impact on his country and his fellow soldiers, and second, the enthusiastic response of WikiLeaks to dispense national security information to the world for the power of it, and the desire to destroy our country.

I guess this is so big a situation it boggles the mind and makes it impossible for people to neatly and simply wrap their brains around it.  It’s easier to watch reality television or listen to pots calling kettles racist.

A newspaper leaking information is something we can deal with.  The Internet dispenses information without any controls - WikiLeaks has no address and no accountability.  That is hugely frightening.  So, I think this is why there is little outrage.

I suppose the right thing is to court martial Private Bradley Manning.  I pray this ends with a firing squad, and they ask me to participate.

Betraying your country because you are an unhappy person just shows you how mundane an appearance evil can make.

The Underlying Cause of Bullying

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Massachusetts’ new state law requires schools to institute an anti-bullying curriculum, investigate acts of bullying, and report the most serious cases to law enforcement officers.  The new law, passed in April, was in response to the suicide of a 15 year old girl who was bullied by a group of South Hadley, Massachusetts students.

We all remember bullying situations from our school years, but those were up close and personal, as opposed to being on the Internet, where public humiliation is the game, and anonymity is the cloak of protection for this disgusting behavior.  Cruelty gets protected by abusing the spirit of the First Amendment, as parents and the ACLU fight to protect the evildoers.

In a 1995 Canadian study, researchers used video cameras in a school playground and observed almost five bullying incident an hour!  Typically, other children stood by and watched, but did or said nothing to help.

Some psychologist-types are busy making up the expensive curriculum to sell to schools for programs to stop bullying.  I guess there’s always someone around who just wants to make a buck.

My take is that schools are afraid to discipline bullying children, because parents (who are negligent in their responsibilities to their children and society) will SUE instead of smacking their kid on the tush and putting him or her to bed without supper and grounding them until they’re ready for social security.

In my day, if you misbehaved at school, you were sent to the dreaded Vice Principal’s office.  Punishment would include a severe talking to, extra assignments, time after school, and/or a refusal to allow you to participate in school activities.  And guess what?  No parent ever complained about protecting their “baby.”  The kids would expect to get even more punishment at home.

Today?  Parents are not married…divorced…remarried…fighting with exes…shacking up with new honeys…involved in dual-career marriages…focused on porn, drugs, the Internet, shopping…whatever.
Intact families with two parents whose emphasis is family and children are getting more and more rare.  Kids see the constant squabbling on TV news, between their parents, in the neighborhood, on radio, on the Internet, where meanness reigns (does anyone post kind things any more?), and on and on.

Where, exactly, are children supposed to learn to be nice?
They don’t see nice at home, in the media, or in the world at large.
Where, then, are children supposed to learn to be nice?

Policing is the last resort in a society where there is no framework for teaching and reinforcing decent behavior.  Activist groups by nature are angry and divisive, and that trickles down to neighborhoods and schoolyards as children, fighting for attention and importance (because they’re not getting it at home), group up and torment other children without remorse and without fear of consequences.

Our children have become arrogant because they are largely on their own without parental leadership, guidance, and attention.

The adults have abandoned their responsibilities to the next generations because of their determination to sacrifice nothing and fulfill every desire in spite of their obligations.

I hear this every day on my radio program, and it makes me sad.

The epitome of bullying is the homegrown American terrorist group…which is growing.

Our country, just like our homes, is fragmented by anger.  The price is our children are modeling the book “Lord of the Flies.”