400 words column

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert---

FALL IS MAGICAL, EVEN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

Stare at a tree long enough on a September afternoon, you'll see one of God's simplest wonders-----a leaf quietly spiraling to the ground in a manner uniquely its own.

It's right up there with the smell of a rose on a spring morning or the twist and turn of a snowflake as it drifts toward your tongue---reminders that nature in its most subtle form is a powerful antidote to all we do to complicate the world.

Fall, in particular, has always carried that kind of magic for me.

As a Midwest kid, I'd marvel at how the rows of green trees that lined our streets would instantaneously transform into an electrifying light show of orange, yellow and red.

Kids throughout the neighborhood would make window displays out of the most colorful of those dying oak leaves. sandwiching them between pieces of waxed paper, which our moms would then iron together.

And, as much as our Dads hated raking leaves, they loved watching, and smelling, them go up in smoke, back before the fire department frowned on such things.

Then, just as quickly, it would all vanish, as if a plug was suddenly pulled and winter had arrived.

Autumn is different from place to place, but even here in Southern California it remains the best time of year, with its cool breezes and crisp blue skies.

It reminds me a little of the first time I experienced Albuquerque.  It was October 1979, and, as I drove over the Sandia Mountains from the east, I saw a color of sky I'd never seen before, and have seen replicated only once since -- in Robert Redford's great film on life in rural New Mexico, "The Malaga Beanfield War."

For a second, I thought I saw it again the other day as I looked toward the San Gabriel Mountains during a midday jog.  "Not quite," I told myself, but stopped to enjoy the view anyway.

I thought of how fall has played such an inspiring role in the travelogue of my life -- those brilliant Octobers in Colorado and New England, where for three or four weekends quiet mountain roads  became the I-10 at rush hour, but no one complained.  I thought back to Evansville, IN., and Aston, PA., and West Nyack. NY. -- places I may never see again, but won't forget if only for the way they made me feel this time of year.

To want to stop and smell the roses, or watch a beautiful leaf at the end of its life gently fall to the ground.


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Larryj

[Diane Amberg]

He's right about those evening sky colors. We don't see them here. The Milagro Bean Field War was a good movie. We were able to find the little town where it was filmed and found the bean field and that irrigation ditch. The film crew had added some buildings and things that were later taken down, but we had no trouble finding the place.

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert

BABY-SITTING NOW A WELL-PAYING JOB.

I'm almost sorry I checked.

But after chatting with a colleague about the high cost of baby-sitting, I was curious:  Are my wife and I paying enough to have someone play zoo-keeper to our brood on those rare nights we dare to venture out?

And as long as I'm asking, what about the allowances we pay those little darlings every week as an incentive not to destroy the house, the dogs or each other?

Turns out, while it may pay to have kids in the eyes of the IRS, the price on the street is a whole other story.

Call it the PPI ----  the Parental Price Index ----  which, according to my calculations, has grown about twice the rate of inflation since the early 70's.

Let's use 1970 as a benchmark, and assume a standard baby-sitting fee back then of $1 an hour.  Today, that dollar, adjusted for inflation, would be worth $5.63.

We pay our sitters almost double that -- $10 an hour --- factoring in that four little monsters  are more work than two.

I thought we were being more than fair, but it turns out, we're a little on the cheap side, at least according to the three professional baby-sitting services I checked into.  Their prices range from $10.50 to $13.50 an hour.

Well, OK, I thought, a professional service is going to cost more than a sitter down the street.  And we do buy the pizza.

So what about allowances?

I never had one as a kid (poor, poor pitiful me) because we all worked.  Paper routes. Mowing lawns.  Caddying.

But let's assume a going rate in 1970 of a buck a week  --  again $5.63 in today's dollars.

That's about what we pay each of our kids -- $5 a week, minus dollar deductions (fines, if you will) for those inevitable missteps.  In a typical week, it adds up to about $15-$16 for the four of them.

Again, it appears we're on the low side.  Though I couldn't find a true average, I found one source with a sliding scale, based on a child's age, and which in our case would add up to $25.39 per week.

I guess the $25 makes sense ---  more so than the .39 -- but I think we'll stick with our formula. 

Our kids will have to live with what they get.

Or, find jobs baby-sitting.

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Larryj

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert

BEATLES' MAGIC, MUSIC REMAIN UNMATCHED.

Paul was the Beatle I most wanted to be when my brothers and I got out the broomsticks and mom's furry winter hats to play act the Fab Four during those early "Ed Sullivan Show" appearances.

Give me a break, I was 7.

By the time I was 8 1/2 --- around the time of "Rubber Soul"  ----  I knew John was a genius, even if I didn't understand a word of "Norwegian Wood."

And so it goes all these years later, as radio stations and old Baby Boomers across the globe commemorate what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday.

Lennon had already reached mythical status long before he was murdered at the age of 40, but his death cemented his and the Beatles' place as cultural icons of unmatchable proportion.

Never would they reunite.

Never would Lennon-McCartney pen another masterpiece.

Never again would America stop everything it was doing to watch musicians make music.

I've tried sharing those stories with my kids, and just last week made them sit through a new CD set of the Beatles' four Sullivan  Show appearances in 1964 and '65.  To my delight they liked it, and asked questions, and wondered why all those girls were screaming.

Was it the hair?  The music? The Beatle boots?

It was all of that and more.

The Beatles were a perfectly timed lightning bolt of energy for an America, and a world, reeling from the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

They weren't the first rock 'n' rollers to captivate audiences or write their own music -- Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly helped blaze those trails half a decade earlier -- but they were the best.

Over the next five years, everything they touched turned to gold -- 29 Top 10 singles in the U.S., including 20 that landed No. 1 on the Billboard charts.  At one point in 1964, 14 of Billboard's Top 100 songs were by the Beatles.

But it's how they changed music over that half-decade that stands out.  Lennon once called "Ticket To Ride" the first heavy metal song, and few have stood up to argue the point.  "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" remains the consensus No. 1 rock-era album of all time.  And when the band released Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1967,  the Beach Boys reportedly pulled the plug on their experimental album "Smile," figuring they were no match.

They weren't.

Four and a half decades later, no one else has been, either.

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Larryj

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert-------

REFLECTING ON A PICTURE WORTH AT LEAST 400 WORDS.

My very limited recall of the third grade does include losing both front teeth on the same day, a seminal moment in a child's life that ranks right up there with your first bicycle crash and having your mouth taped shut by a first-grade nun.

OK, so that last one never happened to you.........................your loss.

Anyway, back to kids and teeth, and a picture that's worth a thousand words --- or at least 400.

My wife took a picture while playing room mom to our youngest daughter's first-grade class, and other than it being unbelievably cute (a dad talking), it's a reminder that the best things in life are ofter -- and literally -- right under our noses. 

Our little Susu (short for Suraya) couldn't care less than that she'll be chewing her Halloween candy a bit slower this year.  She's dropped two teeth in less than a month, and that means two visits -- and four bucks -- from the tooth fairy.

Yes, she's still a believer and with the money she and her older sisters have made in the past two years, they might as well give the tooth fairy the keys to the house.

As they grow up, of course, they'll find teeth taking on new meaning.  Retainers and braces, root canals and crowns.  Coffee stains and bleaching, dentures and night guards.

Americans spend $100 billion on dental care each year -- an even more staggering number when you consider that one in four children has never been to a dentist.

My parents had the means --- and perhaps the sense of humor -- to make sure we had regular checkups.  Which brings up another memory -- the sign in the waiting room that read, "Painless dentist upstairs."  I didn't know it was a joke and come to think of it, I'm not sure my parents ever let me in on it.  No, they made me go to the "painful" dentist downstairs.

It was probably worth it, in the end.  I've been pretty lucky with my teeth.  I did wear a retainer, had my share of fillings and cracked one of my pearlies in half on a bad hop at shortstop, but all my wisdom teeth are still intact and my checkups today amount to x-rays and cleaning.

My kids should be so lucky.

Looking at their smiles, they already are.

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Larryj

[larryJ]

More from Steve Lambert--


A NAUGHTY BLACK FRIDAY IS NICE FOR THE ECONOMY

Naughty and nice.

Back when I was a toe-headed lad, Santa wasn't the only one keeping tabs.  My mom was right there with him, enticing us with a day-after-Thanksgiving tradition that rivaled Christmas morning.

Early that Friday -- the moon and stars still visible in the frosty November skies -- the one or two reasonably well-behaved kids in our household would hop a commuter train with Mom and head into downtown Chicago to navigate the crowds and Christmas displays at the iconic department stores along Michigan Avenue.

We'd endure Mom's incessant shopping in return for our own time in the toy department, a bag of chocolate from the Marshall Fields candy counter, and an indescribably good -- and greasy -- burger and fries at Wimpy's across the street.

They didn't call it Black Friday back then.  That name sprung up on the East Coast in the mid-60s, but really didn't become part of the national lexicon for another 20 or 30 years.

We knew it simply as The Day We Get To Take The Train Into The City With Mom, well worth our best behavior for the weeks leading up to it.

And perhaps it's why, as I've gotten a little older --ok, a lot older -- and more reflective, I've come to appreciate again this unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season. 

The bargains can he mind-blowing, but it's the people, the energy, that make it an experience.

I know what you're thinking.  You hate shopping.  You detest traffic.  You loathe crowds.

So would Scrooge if he were around today -- and were an actual human being.  But Dickens' humbugger also appreciated commerce, and with an economy just waiting for the chance to bust loose, this Thanksgiving weekend is the perfect time to do your part.

Early indications are that holiday sales will be up this year, which would be better than any bailout our elected leaders could dream up.  According to the National Retail Federation, shoppers will spend an average of $688.87 on holiday stuff.

Globally it comes out to nearly a half-trillion dollars -- about $100 billion in the U.S. alone.

That's enough to put a whole lot of retailers in the black (hence the name, Black Friday) and take us back to a time when the sound of cash registers brought smiles to our faces.

Sometimes being a little naughty has a nice ring to it.

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Larryj

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert----------

SOMETIMES PARTING IS THE RIGHT THING

At a firehouse in Industry, somewhere around 3 o'clock this past Monday afternoon, a woman who had given birth only hours before gave that baby boy a life.

I can only imagine what was going through her mind.

Maybe I don't want to know.

Maybe I'd prefer to view it simply as the right thing to do, no questions asked.

Which is how California sees it, and why nearly 10 years after the Safe Surrender Baby Law went into effect, 81 newborns in Los Angeles County have been given a new start.

All 50 states have some form of safe haven law, essentially allowing a parent to give up an unwanted newborn at a designated drop-off point, such as a hospital or police station.

Usually the parent remains anonymous, assuming there's no sign of abuse or neglect.

That was the case Monday.  The woman had given birth three hours earlier and, for some reason we'll never know, handed over the child.

Neither one's life will ever be the same.

After a 14-day "cooling off" period, during which the mother can change her mind, the child can be adopted by a family pre-approved by the Department of Children and Family Services.

As for the mom, it's hard to say how her decision will affect her, but it will.  It's part of her personal resume -- one that can't be erased by time.

Again, I can't imagine.

Again, I don't want to.

I prefer to accept safe haven as an alternative to pure abandonment or, worse, the kind of harm or death we often read about in cases such as this.

Parenting isn't a biological act.  It goes far beyond that, to a place of indescribable responsibility.  No one is perfect at it.  Just ask anyone who has tried to navigate love and discipline, wanting to provide the best for your kids while not simply giving them what they want.

Our job is to provide them with the tools they need, and when we lack those tools ourselves, it can be overwhelming.  Too often, the responsibility is deferred -- to television, video games or, worse, the streets.

Fix parenting, I've often said, and you fix the problems of the world.

The reality, of course,  is you can't fix it -- not on a global scale.

Sometimes the best we can hope for is someone willing to do the right thing.

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Larryj

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert

TIME FLIES------------AND STANDS STILL-----------AT CHRISTMAS

If Einstein was right, and the Earth -- with its mass and gravity is capable of distorting space and time, there must be some scientific explanation as to why Christmas -- with its ribbons and bows -- flies by with greater speed each and every year.

Remember when you were a kid, and the countdown took F-O-R-E-V-E-R?

The local newspaper would remind us how many shopping days were left to the big day, and one year, I swear, the number stood at "17" for a week.

Even "A Charlie Brown Christmas," all 25 minutes of actual running time, seemed to carry on like an epic motion picture.

And as much as we reveled Christmas morning, we couldn't wait for the next day, when we could really play with our toys.

Of course, as we get older, very little about time makes any sense whatsoever.  Years become months, Months become weeks.  And by the time Christmas rolls around, we can barely get up our lights and ornaments before we're putting them back in their boxes and up in the attic.  (If it were just me -- which I know its not -- why is it that those boxes don't seem to collect as much dust from one year to the next?)

Not surprisingly, scientists have studied this phenomenon quite exhaustively, though the results are pretty much what you and I could figure out over a couple of beers.

That a year to a 5-year-old is mathematically more significant than a year to a 50-year-old.

That the "firsts" we experienced as kids take up so much room in our brain that they seem to have lasted forever.

That as we get older, there are more things we'd just as soon forget.

I like that one, even if the things I'd like to forget never seem to get forgotten.

Christmas isn't on that list, by the way.  All these years later, it's still a magical day -- especially with children around to remind you why.

It happened the other night.  I got home after a long day at work to find my three girls huddled around the stereo listening to Christmas music.

A simple moment locked in time.

Einstein may have been right, but once again I've found the real answer in the sweet innocence of my kids.

Maybe, just maybe, by living vicariously through them, time actually can stand still.

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Larryj

[W. Gray]

Another oddity way back then was that the number of shopping days until Christmas did not equal the number of days until Christmas.

Nothing, but nothing, was open on Sunday. Most stores closed at 6:00 pm on Saturday night.

[larryJ]

From Steve Lambert

'Z' RIGHT FORMULA FOR THE NEW YEAR

New Year's Day isn't quite life's equivalent of "Ctrl-Z" -- that beautiful little keystroke that lets you back through your miscues one at a time -- buy it's about as close as we humans come to giving ourselves a blank slate.

We promise to be better people, to lose weight, to save our money.  Then Jan. 2nd or 3rd or 10th comes around and we forget it all.

Which is why I'm not making any New Year's resolutions this year -- just as I didn't this past year -- but will simply try to treat the turn of the calendar for what it is.

That means taking care of all those meetings and lunches I put off until after the first of the year, getting my oldest son squared away at his new school, and making the first of the seven final payments on my car.

For the greater, bigger world out there, the challenges are far more formidable.  By Jan. 1, U.S. national debt will stand somewhere in the vicinity of $13.92 trillion, nearly 2.3 million Californians will be out of work, and the war in Afghanistan will have reached its 3,374 day -- seven months longer than Vietnam and more than eight years since then Defense Secretary Donald Runsfield declared, "The Taliban are gone.  The al-Qaida are gone."

North and South Korea are on the brink of their own war, Europe's financial crisis shows no signs of letting up, and the approval rating for the same Congress Americans voted in just last month has dropped to 13 percent.

No flip of the calendar, no reset button, no Ctrl-Z  can fix that, but you can't convince me either that amazing days aren't ahead.

Just as 2010 gave us the awe-inspiring heroism of the Chilean coal miners, the remarkable rebirth of General Motors and the innovation of the IPad, 2011 can be remembered for its contributions, not just its debits.

Who will overcome adversity to achieve greatness?

What invention or medical breakthrough will change our lives?

Which world leader will take the boldest step toward peace?

The more I think about it, the more jazzed I get.

Happy New Year!

Wipe the slate clean!

Oh, and if I do decide to make any resolutions, I reserve the right to Ctrl-Z them at any time.

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Larryj