Mark Knows It All

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...

My son complained that he was having difficulty finding somebody nice to date. I told him to keep looking. I scared myself when I added “water seeks its own level”. I had turned into my father. But looking at the type of girl one sees on television today, I can see his point. Floosies abound. Also quoting my father giving advice to my myriad of female cousins, “If you dress like a whore, you’ll be treated like whore” has now been given new meaning. Which leads me to today’s topic, are there any “ladies” left in the world today, and if so, where are they? For many females today, their appearance, as well as their behavior, is abominable. Don’t they look in the mirror before they leave the house? I am tired at looking at butt cracks with tattoos, bare mid-drifts barely covering Tallahassee, bouncing bosoms in a grungy top over which flows stringy, dirty hair, bad makeup, and a worse attitude. I just have one thing to say, COVER UP. In this age where a guy is accused of sexual harassment ...

My family is an Ohio State family. My father, my wife, and my brother are all Ohio State grads. I remember when I was small, my father would drive to Columbus, pre-freeways on Route 62, to take us to the games. Ohio State wasn’t doing very well in those days, and often times, the stadium would only be ¾ full. Ferguson ALWAYS carried the ball. We would have brunch in the Ohio Union and watch the band at the skull session at St. John’s Arena. If the family was flush, we would stay at the Holiday Inn over night. It was a big deal. When I attended Ohio State beginning in 1970, I became addicted. My wife and I honeymooned on the 50 yard line of Ohio Stadium. We had 50 yard line seats for the Michigan game that year, and no wedding was going to get in the way. It turned out to be one of the best Michigan games I have ever seen. If I remember correctly, Ohio State won the game with 5 goal line stands against Michigan. They burned cars on High Street that night. After we graduated, we attended...

I was discussing with some friends the events in Great Britain this past week, and we wondered aloud how one would build a liquid bomb. I opined that the recipe could most likely be had on line, so I googled "liquid bomb ingredients". Here is the result: LIQUID BOMB 1 oz Vodka 1 oz Bacardi Limon Rum 2 oz Alize Gold Passion Liqueur 2 oz peach schnapps 3 oz cranberry juice 3 oz orange juice Pour the Alize, rum, schnapps, vodka into a old-fashion glass with ice. Add the juices to flavor. Mix well and enjoy. So there you have it. I wonder if it will become the drink "du jour". As Americans, we tend to see the humor in many things, even the tragic. But when we watched what happened in the UK this past week, were we seeing the evil that Islamic Fascism represents, or some abstract event? And then go out for dinner and a drink. Islamic Fascism is real, and horrible. It is fed overtly with our petro dollars by countries such as Iran and Syria. Hezbollah just didn't driv...

I recently took a walk around my neighborhood and discovered some different approaches as to how people perceive their homes. I am not quite sure what people think they see when they look at their house, but obviously it is not what I am seeing. My new neighbor down the street sees two lovely dogs now free to romp through the suburbs. I see two rottweilers who love to charge children and little dogs when walking past their house. They see nibby neighbors who are infringing on their enjoyment of their free wielding pets. I see the dog warden who has been out to their house twice already about local leash laws. The neighbor up the street from me sees a humanitarian effort to employ homeless people and convicted felons. I see a house whose landscaping has been torn up for the past 2 years with a bulldozer permanently installed in the front yard because the owner can’t get anyone to come in and finish the job his derelict crew couldn’t complete. He keeps promising to take care of the eyes...

I have recently had occasion to provide some assistance to an elderly gentleman with no family. He is 88 years old and deaf. I met him for the first time several months ago when his much younger friend and caretaker died leaving him alone. Being somewhat infirm, he was taken to a hospital the day his friend died, and then to a nursing home. He is a sweet, gentle man, who, over his lifetime, spent many untold hours helping others. As is often the case with folks who have no family, he is well fixed. For the first month or so that I knew him, I was able to communicate with him through the use of tablets and a lot of ink. He would read what I wrote out loud, and then respond. We discussed religion, his past, and his friends. He corrected me on my spelling numerous times. Then, he suffered a small stroke. He ceased communicating with people, brushing their hands aside when they touched him and telling people to go away. He shut his eyes and refused to open them. He is still living, but is ...

The question I have is where did Hezbollah get those radar guided missiles? They are expensive, and they had to be transported to southern Lebanon. And the Hezbollah terrorists had to be trained to shoot them, or someone else is shooting them for them. There are two lessons to be learned from the world situation today. 1) Leave the fighting of wars to the military, and the politics in Washington. Patton wanted to march to Moscow. MacArthur wanted to march to Beijing. We had the exclusive use of weaponry at the time to win if we only had the courage to use it. The result of these failures is a Communist China refusing to reign in a nuclear threat from North Korea. Fight to win the war totally and unconditionally, or don't fight the war at all. That threat will not go away, and we are going to have to deal with it eventually. 2) You cannot procrastinate fighting despots or idealogues. The mess in the Middle East today is solely due from our failure to address the problems of Islamist...

Do you have any dirty pleasures? Those are things that you would never in a million years admit to anyone that you enjoy or enjoy doing. Maybe because they are “secret”, they tend to be more satisfying. Here are some of mine. Movies : This is a toss up category. Consider the Porky’s series. If you aren’t familiar with these pieces of intellectual wasteland, rent one and find out for yourself. Yes, they are raunchy. But the proposed lineup to find out who has been sneaking a peek in the girl’s locker room will put any prude on the floor with laughter. Tied with the Porky’s series is The Fast and The Furious series. Filled with urban lingo and “in the ‘hood” justice, the souped up cars and associated choreography are really something to watch, and I can tap to the rap and say “bro” with the best of them. Television : I had to think about this category for awhile, but Bridezillas tops my television dirty pleasure list. This show on the WE Channel deals with over the top brides plannin...

While at a bar on Friday night, I bumped into a friend with whom I have had some, let’s say, heated political discussions over the years. I asked him if he had plans for a fun Fourth of July. His response: “Given the current state of this country, why would I want to celebrate?” How sad an answer, but not unexpected given his left wing political orientation. Don’t get me wrong, we are close and fast friends, and I have enjoyed the dialogue over the years. But this time, he seemed to mean it. What is the current state of the country? 1) Unemployment is at an historic low, right around 4.8%. As the baby boomers retire, the labor market will tighten even more. At the core of the immigration issue is the simple fact there are not enough Americans to do the jobs that our vibrant economy is creating. This will have ramifications that will effect our culture across the board, including language issues, border issues, security issues, minimum wage issues, but isn’t low unemployment a good prob...

I was surprised at the number and rapidity of comments I got relating to The Prairie Home Companion blog. I didn’t know that movies were such a hot topic. So I thought I would share with you my movie picks for great summer viewing. These are smaller movies which may or may not have been seen by a wide audience. Notwithstanding the huge diversity of topics, they all have one thing in common. These are good people trying their best to get along in life, albeit with various degrees of success. 1) THE MAJESTIC : I mentioned this movie last week. It is about a writer under investigation by the McCarthy Commission who loses his memory in a car accident and is mistaken for a fallen war hero in a small California town. Kleenex Box alert. 2) MY FAVORITE YEAR : This is a comedy blockbuster starring Peter O’Toole as you have never seen him. It is a takeoff on Sid Caesar’s 1950’s television program, with O’Toole playing a washed up actor trying to make a come b...

I have only heard The Prairie Home Companion radio show a few times over the years. I would be away from home, driving around and surfing the radio dial trying to find something to which to listen. It is an odd sounding program, so it always gave me pause. Then I usually started to laugh, and I was hooked. The bluegrass/country music wasn’t bad either. For those of you not familiar with the program, it is a live radio show produced by PBS and broadcast on NPR, the subject of which is every day life in a small Minnesota town. Garrison Keillor is its originator and host. Because my wife is from a small town (Shiloh, OH, pop: 800), I have observed small town life first hand. It IS different than what many of us are used to. Sitting in the American Legion next to the train tracks, with all the doors and windows open on a sultry August night drinking 50 cent beers, one learns what it means to come from a “red” state. At my wife’s 20th year high school class reunion, I learned how to talk a...

I have written before about the diminishing role of males in today’s society. My comments included: 1) the treatment of men as buffoons on television sitcoms; 2) the violence exhibited against men on sitcoms and Lifetime Network television; 3) societal assumption of the feminist view that men and women are “the same”, where science has clearly shown that is not the case; 4) the wholesale adaptation of the “feminized” method of teaching in the schools, the result being a marked drop in male achievement scores, college admissions, and degree completion; 5) the legal system’s unequal and unconstitutional treatment of men in alleged sex abuse and rape cases as well as the inequality of sentencing for female sexual predators. But most disturbing, the importance of the role of fathers has all but been eliminated in today’s society. Modern television shows like Sex in the City , Friends , Roseanne , Queer as Folk and Will and Grace clearly take the position that men are not needed to raise...

My son and I were watching an umpteenth rerun of Mama’s Family very early in the morning the other day. The story line had Mama and her friends dressing up as the Andrews Sisters singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy at a high school dance, and saving the day when the scheduled punk band didn’t show up. Given that punk when out with the “hair” bands of the late eighties and early nineties, the morning was just chock full of dated references. My son is a fan of rat pack chic, and therefore at least knew who the Andrews Sisters were. I started to play some mind games. I have an incompetent 89 year old client who is confined to a nursing home. Going through his personal effects, I found his father’s discharge papers from the army dated 1899, along with a medal for serving in the Spanish American War. His father was 25 when he joined the army in 1887, which means my client’s father was born during the Civil War. That puts me within 2 degrees of separation from the Civil War, and 1 degree of se...

From time to time, we all make a faux pas. For those of you who don’t know the definition, it is a French word the literal translation of which is “mistake”. In our society, however, it has taken on an aura of a social misstep resulting in a high degree of public embarrassment and humiliation. I often say that humiliation is my friend as I faux pas my way through life. My family just rolls their eyes. One of my more blatant faux pas occurred when a church I once attended made a concerted effort to bring more minorities into its congregation. A minority family found its way into our lily white establishment, and I hoped to make a valiant effort in making this very lovely family feel comfortable. As a church dinner approached, I asked our then minister the last name of the new family. His reply: “Oh! You mean the Buppies”. At the church dinner, I proceeded to introduce the family as the “Buppies”. I came to find out that it was a slang word for a black yuppie, a term with which I was unf...

I generally watch Fox News. Fox has gotten a bad rap of being the “Bush” television network, and/or conservative to a fault. By definition to some, that makes it evil. It isn’t. It portrays divergent points of view, including the conservative point of view which through my personal observation gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop on the broadcast networks. It certainly is the antithesis of Dan Rather. The same can be said for Fox and Friends, the Fox morning show, versus the Today Show. That being said, on the weekends, I tend to watch either CNN or the MSNBC for different perspectives of the news, plus the fact I don’t really care for the Fox weekend teams which tend to be smarmy. Today is Memorial Day. When I woke up, I turned on CNN at 7:30 to see if the world blew up last night. The first story I saw had to do with the American atrocities that allegedly occurred in Iraq sometime ago. It was portrayed something akin to the Holocaust. The next story concerned itself with the war protes...

Everybody has to have a guy. Seinfeld did an entire episode based on knowing a “guy” that could get or fix anything. Having a guy makes life livable. It brings it down to a human scale and builds a community of people around you that you can count on when in a jam. My family has several “guys”, and we use them regularly. Here are some of them. There is Ronald and Robert, our car guys. They help keep my son’s 1993 Cadillac operational at a reasonable price. We see them often, and they tell me time to get rid of that bomb as often as I see them. They are two brothers who started a mechanics business behind their Lube Stop franchise. They have a big ole dog named Avalanche, who sleeps in the middle of everything. If you are lucky, or not depending on your point of view, your car will be getting a brake job while Avalanche is getting a haircut, especially if he has rolled over on this back showing his altogether!!!!!! There is Tom, our tile guy. Tom’s regular job is being a cop. It is goo...

Whether by design or default, and while you were looking the other way, George Bush has given the United States the biggest change in our national thinking since Franklin Roosevelt. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt increased the role of the Federal Government, and it came to be looked upon as the ultimate problem solver for the national ills. That idea continued over the next 60 years as the Federal spending and bureaucracy continued to grow. Yes, it even grew through the years of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both ostensibly conservative Republicans who talked a good game, but paid more lip service than action in limiting the size of the Federal Government. George W. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't say much. But his actions, or inactions, speak plenty. For many years, I viewed his behavior as a total lack of leadership. But then a series of events began to happen which individually don't mean much, but taken together, show a major shift in power from the Fed...