Mark Knows It All

I am 56 years old, and feel like I am 20 years younger. I keep a full schedule at work, doing things now that years ago I never would have imagined myself doing. Other than some GI distress, I am relatively healthy. I sleep a little more on the weekends, but still want to have fun. Imagine my mental distress when I read on the internet that I am in the “wrong demographic”. How can that be? My wife and I are full blown baby boomers, the largest segment in our society. Our kids are grown and their college is either paid for or pert near paid for. We are at our peak earning years. We have expendable income, and less than expendable time that we are looking to use in a fulfilling manner. Nonetheless, when the cable television networks the WB (A Time Warner subsidiary) and UPN (A CBS Viacom subsidiary) merged last May to form the new CW television network, us boomers were deemed to be the wrong demographic. How did I find out? One of the few television shows my wife and I watch on a regular...

Much is made these days about being a team player. Schools try to instill the values of “the team” by continuously forcing group projects into the curriculum. We watch our sports teams and hope that the team members won’t hog the ball. In a country built by rugged individualism, the media extols the virtues of “community”. Even in raising our families, Hillary Clinton says that “It Takes a Village”. I googled definitions of teamwork, and found a thousand platitudes from Vince Lombardi to Paul McCartney. But hidden in these platitudes was a quote from Susan Gerke, who headed IBM’s Leadership Development: She said: “Conflict is inevitable in a team ... in fact, to achieve synergistic solutions, a variety of ideas and approaches are needed. These are the ingredients for conflict”. Translated, conflict is a necessary part of the process, and therefore has to be accommodated. Let’s take a look at what teamwork is not. Teamwork is not mindlessly following a leader, buying into the argu...

Ask any teacher, and they will tell you that mainstreaming of students with educational handicaps is one of the biggest problems schools face today. Boardman Local Schools has always ranked as one of the top school systems here in Mahoning County. But for the last few years, their ranking has fallen. The Superintendent of Schools bluntly told the media after the last round of state testing, the reason for the decline in Boardman’s ranking was due directly to a hand full of students with developmental problems who are required to be tested with the rest of the student body, notwithstanding any physical or mental handicaps that would hinder their ability to learn. In another local system, the principal has warned the high school staff of the incoming 9th grade class which has a disproportionate amount of students with educational handicaps. Rulings from various courts require the school to “accommodate” these students. That means giving them special seating, special tests, reading tests ...

We have become a nation of foodies. We all love to eat and cook at home. The Food Channel is filled with celebrity chefs making money showing us how “easy” it is to cook and entertain. We run to the Viking store and buy $10,000.00 stoves to place in between our Sub-Zero refrigerators and marble counter tops over which hang racks of expensive pots and pans. We can grill in or grill out, eating off earth toned dishes that are every bit as expensive as the Lenox place settings for which our parents forced us to register when we got married 35 years ago, and we use regularly once every 5 years. And we all need one of those $180.00 knives to make our lives complete. Oh yes, don’t forget 50 different varieties of martini glasses. And after we buy all of this stuff, and spend our weekends praying at the foodie temples of Williams Sonoma and the Pottery Barn, we eat out 5 nights per week. I have to admit, I do watch the Food Channel. There is Paula Dean, that ripe southern fruit with the grizz...

At the end of September, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, got off his airplane from Munich waiving a piece of paper in his hand and said the following: “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time…” Hitler had threatened to march into all of Czechoslovakia unless Britain and France agreed to allow Germany to annex the Sudentenland, an area of Czechoslovakia which had large numbers of ethnic Germans, but strategically important to the Czechs. Two agreements were signed by the Germans, Italians, French and the British. (Note that Czechoslovakia wasn't invited to the party). The first caved to the German demands. The second agreement stated that war would not be used to resolve any future disagreements between Britain, the United States, and Germany, only “peaceful” means. As Chamberlain was waiving this agreement at the press, Hitler was back in B...