Brian Vaszily

Think You're Pretty Smart? Then Try "The Japanese IQ Test!"

Brian Vaszily — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:46:00 GMT

I love games. Not the ones people in relationships play with one another, but board games, brainteasers and the like. From playing Hi Ho Cherry-O with my sister, Boggle with my grandmother, and word searches on my own in my youth, to playing Life with...(read more)

20 Very Strange Album Covers (and Boy, How We'll Miss Them!)

Brian Vaszily — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:57:00 GMT

Like just about anyone over age 30, I miss album covers. I am of course referring to the big ones that covered vinyl records (LPs). The ones that cover CDs are only about 14% as big, and those that covered cassettes only 7%; this reduction in size since...(read more)

Dining in the Dark: Now You Can Eat in a Pitch Black Restaurant where the Waitstaff is Blind

Brian Vaszily — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:23:00 GMT

Technorati Profile It is a sense- and mind-altering dining experience that has enjoyed immense popularity in European cities, including the Blinde Kuh (Blind Cow) in Zurich where the concept was first started. And it can now be experienced at Opaque restaurant...(read more)

10 Most Bizarre Sports You've Likely NEVER Heard Of (with Amazing Bizarre Sports Pictures)

Brian Vaszily — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:39:00 GMT

Sports are microcosms of human living. I watch my son wrestle in high school and see the beautiful sense of purpose it gives him, and the great lessons of hard work, team work, delayed gratification, winning and especially coping with loss. But I watch...(read more)

The Sound of a Billion Kitchen Blenders: The World's Largest Cicada "Infestation" is Coming!

Brian Vaszily — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:39:00 GMT

Technology that can actually render objects invisible. The paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Etch-a-Sketch. People come up with some very neat stuff. Then again, we tend to get so caught up in these works of people – not to mention getting...(read more)

The World’s 25 Oddest Jobs (with Inspirational, Hilarious, Stupid Insights Included at No Extra Charge)

Brian Vaszily — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:34:00 GMT

Have you read The World's Oddest Jobs and Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician Part I and the conclusion in Part II yet? That’s where I covered one of the most unusual and difficult jobs I ever held -- making carrot juice by hand for...(read more)

The Oddest Jobs, the Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician Part II: The Virtues of Bright Orange Hands

Brian Vaszily — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:25:00 GMT

[Be sure to first read The Oddest Jobs, the Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician Part I ] If what you do for a living defines who you are to some extent, then to some extent at the age of sixteen I became a carrot. You see, for about...(read more)

The World's Oddest Jobs and Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician

Brian Vaszily — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 06:40:00 GMT

I was a Carrot Juice Technician. Before I get to that story, a few questions and some related thoughts for you to consider (and perhaps by the end of this piece you’ll also be motivated to share your comments and answers to these questions; everyone’s...(read more)

The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 3: The Final 15 Photos

Brian Vaszily — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 04:29:00 GMT

Below are the final photos from the three-part "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places" short essay and photo series.

After you have read the essay and viewed all 40 of abandoned places photos, I and certainly others who come to read this would love to hear your own personal thoughts and recollections in relation to the Abandoned Places short essay.

Also, either in the comments area here or by clicking the new "Digg It" button at the bottom of this page where others are leaving comments -- click it & it will take you to Digg.com where you can easily create a new account if you have none and then vote to "Digg" this column (or not to) -- please leave a Digg comment answering this: what is your personal "favorite" one or two photos out of all 40 of the photos you will see over the three-part series... and why? (I always find feedback like this interesting and enriching for all versus a one-way blog.)

So if you haven't already, in addition to the photos below...

See "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 1" (including 11 amazing abandoned places photos)

See "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 2" (including 14 amazing abandoned places photos)

And now on to the final 15 photos...

Abandoned Grain Shed in Alberta, Canada

Abandoned Trains in Brazil

Abandoned Theme Park in Japan
(that's Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels with Mt. Fiji in the background)

Abandoned Cemetery

Abandoned Bridge in Maryland

Abandoned Barn

Abandoned Truck in Kyrgyzstan

Abandoned Amusement Park 1

Abandoned Amusement Park 2

Abandoned Prison in Ohio

Abandoned Boat

Abandoned Drive-In Theater

Abandoned Pachinko Gaming Parlor in Japan

Abandoned Mansion in Iowa

Abandoned Gold Mine Train in Panama

If you haven't already...

See "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 1" (including 11 amazing abandoned places photos)

See "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 2" (including 14 amazing abandoned places photos)

... and then please consider leaving a comment here or click the "Digg It" button below -- where you can quickly and easily set up an account if you have none -- and vote to "Digg" or not "Digg" this article ... AND leave a comment there on which photos were your "favorites" ... and why? (And any abandoned places thoughts or memories you have in relation to the essay are appreciated as well.)

The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 2: You (& Even MORE Amazing Pictures)

Brian Vaszily — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:35:00 GMT

[Be sure to first see Part I of this Abandoned Places piece ...]

Abandoned places.

You’re driving in the country and they are there, some trying to hide behind overgrown weeds or in dark woods like the abandoned house in my Michigan story that concludes below, while others lean obvious against barren landscapes of corn or sand or nothing.

Or you pass them while riding the train through the city or across the entire continent and they stand there in ignored neighborhoods, former towns, and forgotten fields, dead at first glance but then so pregnant when you close your eyes after they pass and you really consider them.

Yes, this surely includes the famous ancient abandoned places like the Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian and Mayan ruins, but you don’t need to wait years or an entire lifetime for the metamorphoses that standing before or within such classic structures can provide. The experience can be just as powerful, perhaps more so, at those abandoned places like a long-vacant house in the woods that are humbler but more accessible.

And it is inevitable that no matter where you are and where you go – though surely some geographic areas are richer in it than others -- you can find these abandoned places. Abandoned homes and abandoned churches. Lost cemeteries. Abandoned schools, farms, factories, cafes, playgrounds and maybe even abandoned prisons or amusement parks.

Your body doesn’t need to wander inside them. Where safety is a concern you don’t even need to wander too near to them.

The point instead is to be in the presence of the abandoned place, even briefly, and to then let your mind and spirit wander inside of them. If you seek a means to stir your soul, to ignite your creativity, to remind yourself and loved ones how fleeting life is and why now …NOW … is the only time to pursue your dreams and purpose, and to know you more, I highly recommend abandoned places.

What I mean is this:

My wife, my mother, my kids and I peered through chunks of missing wall into the long-abandoned house that had been swallowed by the thicket off to the side of a Michigan country road. Though it was mostly dirt and weeds and trees inside, a few remnants like the old rusted refrigerator and the shape of the place itself thoroughly reminded that people once lived and hoped and laughed and cried and failed and tried in there.

And so at one point I saw my eleven-year-old son staring away from the house, off into the trees.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

He looked back at me, no longer the expression of impatient adventure on his face but serious. Serious serious.

“What happened to the family that lived in this house?” he wanted to know.

Which prompted his step-sister, standing behind me, to ask, “And were they a happy family, or were they sad?”

And this is the transformative power of abandoned places.

These questions and others like it had passed through my mind the first time I spied this abandoned house in the thicket. Standing in its presence these questions and others like it had now been passing through my spirit. My wife’s too. My mother’s too, and she responded to the kids with the only answer that could be given to such intense questions:

“I’m not sure, but who do you think lived in it? And do you think they were happy or sad?”

This prompted consideration and discussion. Being eleven, and being a boy with a vivid imagination, my son decided that a family of thieves had lived there. They had robbed the residents in the nearby town of Port Austin one too many times in the night, he would add back in the car, and so the residents banded together and killed them all. Later he would change that to merely running the family out of the house and out of the area forever.

My step-daughter, ten and more the realist, disagreed. She decided they were pretty much an average family. Probably a mom, dad, brother and sister. Probably mostly happy, but with some sad times like all families go through. And maybe the last sad time, like running out of money to pay their bills, forced them to leave this house and move into an apartment in Detroit.

As adults, my wife, my mother and I had different answers to these questions. And other questions prompted by the answers. Some of these we voiced, others we kept to ourselves. And of course, none of it had anything to really do with whoever had actually lived in that long abandoned house.

Instead the questions and answers that came to our mind had everything to do with who we each were -- what we appreciated, what we feared, what we dreamed, where we had been and wanted to go.

Just as when you stand before an old cemetery and wonder who these people buried here were, and how they lived their lives, and did they die with regrets and what were those regrets, the answers you find are really about you.

Just as when you stand before an old and abandoned prison, or an old and abandoned hospital or asylum, and wonder what the people that were once there did to get there, and what they had to endure, the fears and answers you may face are really about you.

Just as when you stand before an abandoned church and wonder who prayed there, and who led the prayer there, and whose prayers were and were not answered, and who believed and who didn’t really, the answers you find are really about you.

And just as when you stand before an abandoned playground, the monkey bars and merry go round buried in weeds, and for some reason you find yourself weeping, the reason is really about you.

That is the point and the power of abandoned places.

---------------

Abandoned Church in Mexico

Abandoned Farm in Iceland

Abandoned Car

Abandoned Hotel in California

Abandoned Kitchen

Abandoned Rollercoaster 1

Abandoned Rollercoaster 2

Abandoned Rollercoaster 3

Abandoned Copper Mine Building in Alaska

Abandoned Ship in Alaska

Abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel in Cambodia

Abandoned Church and Cemetery in Wales

Abandoned Train Car in Illinois

Abandoned Playground

And be sure check out the final fifteen amazing Abandoned Places photos...

See "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 3: The Final 15 Abandoned Places Photos" Now

[P.S. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to subscribe to this free blog. Don't have any idea how to subscribe to a blog? Start by clicking on the RSS 2.0 button above, and then check out the Wikipedia article it links to. J ]

The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places Part 1: Questions and Answers

Brian Vaszily — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:54:00 GMT

The country drive between the quaint town of Port Austin, Michigan and my in-law’s cottage near Port Aux Barques Lighthouse on Lake Huron takes twenty or so minutes. At about the halfway point on the drive a dense and dark patch of woods and weeds appears and then is just as quickly gone. If you’re not looking specifically into it as you pass, you don’t see the outline of the abandoned house that has been swallowed by this thicket.

My wife, because she had been passing by this abandoned house since her childhood – it had been vacant since her earliest memories but the trees and weeds had not yet swallowed it so thoroughly— knew to point it out to our children, my mother and me when we visited my in-laws a number of years back.

We took several drives between their cottage and Port Austin during that stay, and each time we slowed down and strained our eyes to make out that shadow of a house buried deep within branches and green. And every time – especially that time we passed it at night – my son begged us to stop the car, get out and “investigate it.” He was eleven years old. Meanwhile, my step-daugther, a year younger, begged us not to investigate it – especially that time we passed it at night.

The day we departed their cottage for the long drive back home to Illinois, my wife, mother and I decided to grant my son his wish.

I parked by the side of the road by these woods and my mother and I invited him to get out of the car with us to investigate more closely – which, my mother stressed to me as much as her grandson, meant “only so far as it felt safe to go and no further.” My wife volunteered to stay back, but to all of our surprise our daughter said she was a little scared but wanted to go, too.

So the five of us – with me the male superhero of our story leading the way and hoping to appear rational and fearless, though I’d secretly already convinced myself I had seen something half-human climbing in the trees above the abandoned house and it would probably eat me – made our way cautiously into the woods. Just a little bit in. Avoiding high weeds and snaking our way along some long-unused path of lower weeds.

And then, at my son’s whispered begging and to only modest protests from my step-daughter and wife and with continued cautions from my mother, just a little further in.

And then further in.

Until we were standing just a few feet before and then creeping around this two-story ghost that smelled of soil and moldy boxes.

There would be no real “going inside” because the inside had mostly become the outside, and vice versa. The structure had no basement but instead rested on a concrete slab with multiple large cracks through which giant weeds and small trees grew. And though the entire weathered wood skeleton of the abandoned house was still in place, there was more lack of the stuff that makes up walls left than there were walls, and the entire second floor and roof had collapsed or been blown away.

And yet in what had been the kitchen we still saw a nearly rusted-over refrigerator – the smaller kind with rounded edges from perhaps the 1950s, its door permanently forced open by branches and years of blown dirt piled inside it. There was an equally old porcelain sink lying on its side half-submerged in dirt in that same room. Dirt nearly a foot thick in some parts now covered the floors in what had been other rooms, perfect for growing all the weeds but forever concealing any other remnants of the living that once occurred in that house.

Now, I know this is all sounds like the setup for a B-grade horror film that rakes in $50 million through DVD rentals. And yes, on several occasions when my kids weren’t looking I did indeed toss sticks and stones at the abandoned house’s support beams and that old refrigerator, insisting afterward no matter how hard they asked that it wasn’t me. And yes, come to think of it I may someday write a B-grade horror movie screenplay that starts out this way just to see if I can nab part of that $50 million.

But that is not the point of this piece.

There is no action-packed ending to this true story at all. No angry spirits chased us away from the abandoned house. No half-human up in the tree swooped down and tried to eat me (though it may have if I stayed there much longer.)

Instead, the five of us investigated. We talked to one another in whispers. We pondered. And in some way, and each in our own way, we gained from this abandoned place.

And that is the point of this piece:

The questions my son and step-daughter asked us as we peered into and through this long abandoned house that had once been a home. The questions we asked them in return. The questions we asked ourselves. And oh, the answers .... and how it all impacts you...

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IMPORTANT NOTE: Scroll down past this first set of amazing abandoned places photos below and click on the link there to read the powerful Part II conclusion of this piece -- and to see even MORE amazing abandoned places photos....

Abandoned House in Nova Scotia

Abandoned Sanitarium in Kentucky

Abandoned House in North Carolina

Abandoned Diner

Abandoned Train Station

Abandoned Truck in Canada

Abandoned Barn in Nebraska

Abandoned Lighthouse on Lake Superior

Abandoned School in Washington

Abandoned Bicycle

Abandoned Church in Canada

Be sure to check out the 29 even more amazing abandoned places photos now ...

Read the Conclusion of "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places" Essay Now & See Even More Amazing Abandoned Places Photos

Why Adults Need to Party Much More: The Growing Loneliness Epidemic in America & Beyond

Brian Vaszily — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:43:00 GMT

I’ll bet you need to enjoy life more. In particular, I’ll bet you need to party more.

Perhaps that sounds juvenile. Nonetheless, the statement is actually especially true if your high school and college years are long behind you. It is even truer if you are married and truest of all if you also have children and even grandchildren. You need to party more.

See, common knowledge says we're increasingly connected to one another. But that’s a load of nonsense. Oh sure, with the Web, email, instant messaging, cell phones, real-time production and distribution technologies, big and fast planes and all the rest, the world is indeed smaller and smaller in terms of our access to one another’s surfaces – we can now communicate basic thoughts, instructions, opinions, pictures and videos to those down the street or on the other side of the world in moments. We can order flowers online today and hand them to our significant others tomorrow – flowers that just a few days before were still attached to their roots in Ecuadorian greenhouses or Chinese fields.

That’s all neat-o.

But speed and volume of contact have nothing to do with depth of contact. You can exchange requests via email and cell phone with hundreds of people per day every day, you can blast out your opinion on dozens of news stories and other topics via the Web in a matter of hours, you can post videos of yourself on YouTube for tens of thousands to see, you can even get a TV show and spout your opinion to millions, but that is all merely presenting the surfaces you want others to see. That is not opening yourself emotionally to anyone, nor is it allowing others to open themselves personally to you. No face-to-face, no mutual letting down the guard and being real, no shared vulnerability, no experiencing one another’s physical energy in response to intense conversation and experiencing the stuff of life together. Instead, from behind your computer monitor, your cubicle walls, your office door, or the fortress of your home and vehicle, it is all a script. A form of hiding.

Bonding, if it can even be called that, is awfully tenuous when it is merely surface-to-surface.

And so with everything cited above -- and with the increasing length of time people spend working, the decreasing amount of time people spend on leisure activities (now at its lowest level since World War II in the U.S.), the hefty chunk of what leisure time they do have wasted on watching TV, and other factors -- we are more isolated from experiencing the depths of one another than at any time in human history.

We are very lonely.

In fact, those who research such things say we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Nursing based on adults in the UK and Australia found that one in three now consider themselves lonely there. Another recent study published in the American Sociological Review found that the average American now has only two close friends in whom they can confide on important matters – down from an average of three in 1985. Those who say they have NO ONE to talk to on a personal level went from 10 percent in 1985 to almost 25 percent in 2004. An additional 19 percent had only one confidant – usually their spouse.

Of course, the older you are the more likely it is that you don’t need statistics like these to confirm the growing sense of isolation and loneliness in the U.S. and apparently elsewhere in the Western world; you can probably cite many external examples of it, you likely feel it yourself, and you likely already know that in addition to being one of the worst feelings one can have, loneliness poses real health risks including a weakened immune system.

I am 37 years old, perhaps young according to at least some people reading this (I hope), but I have definitely seen and felt a strong societal shift to increased isolation and loneliness in my lifetime. For example, in the neighborhood I grew up in on the northwest side of Chicago, neighbors really did get to know their neighbors in-depth. There were backyard get-togethers, block parties, and evening socials in front rooms or on front steps. The same was typical for my relatives who lived in different neighborhoods throughout Illinois and the U.S. Meanwhile, if they weren’t being forced to do homework or chores or to go to sleep, the neighborhood kids -- me included -- spent their lives with each other at the park, in the alley, down the street, or somewhere (anywhere!) outside.

Today we’re lucky if we even know the first names of the people who live next door and across the street from us. Today many kids seem to think of the outside as that place you step through to move between buildings and vehicles. A few days ago where I live now there was a snowstorm and – whereas in my youth that would inevitably mean two thousand and six kids rolling it, throwing it, sledding on it, and (the bad boys) skitching on it as soon as school let out – there has only been one pair of children (out of many I see get off the school bus and enter their homes) who has played in it since. In front of people’s houses on street after street around here, the snow lies untouched.

Which is all to say, I’ll bet you need to party more.

Not “party” in the limited college fraternity sense (though if that is what you desire, well, just be careful out there.) Instead, party in the sense of regularly getting together with people aside from or in addition to the one or two you may already be lucky enough to confide in to do something (anything!) enjoyable. This might be something you currently appreciate, like dancing, playing board games, praying, knitting, discussing books, singing, or simply talking, or something new you always wanted to try since novelty usually adds an additional layer of enjoyment.

The real purpose, of course, is to open up, let go, enjoy and be with other people … and thereby really experience those other people, which as social beings is what we ultimately thrive on, and how we ultimately expand ourselves. Away goes that sense of isolation, and a real new friend or two is often also made in the process.

No human is an island. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to shield yourself with the biggest computer monitor or sleekest cell phone out there. It doesn’t matter if your voice is carried on every TV in the country or if you’re a millionaire or billionaire. Lonely and despondent kings and queens are a cliché. Side-by-side and face-to-face we need to experience the depths and energies of other people, and to open ourselves so others can experience ours. The more the merrier. If that is being juvenile, then being juvenile is about the healthiest thing you can be.

So party on.

[Oh Hey, a P.S. Please sure to subscribe to this free “Live Deeper” blog; you’ll get short pieces as well as long pieces like this encouraging and enabling you to enjoy life a little bit to a lot of bit more, and perhaps best of all, you'll eventually get invitations to some seriously intense and wonderful events really enabling you to “live deeper” (subscribe and you’ll see what I mean). Don’t have any idea how to subscribe to a blog? Start by clicking on the RSS 2.0 button above, and then check out the Wikipedia article it links to. And finally, I’d love to hear your comments, and others might as well, so please sign up above and leave a comment here, too. Now as mentioned, please party on. J ]

The One Thing You are Most Likely to Regret

Brian Vaszily — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:30:00 GMT

It is my observation that far too many people end up merely existing versus really living. Go to work, come home, watch some TV, go to bed, and the same thing again the next day. Shopping and chores and more TV on the weekend. A few holidays in between. Yawn. And then always too suddenly, the deathbed -- and yes, the fear of coming death, but moreso the fear and regret of a life not fully lived.

When I was fifteen years old, I had a conversation with an elderly gentleman who was sitting in a wheelchair at a table at McDonald's. He had the most enormous feet I'd ever seen. On my way back from the men's room I just had to ask him what size shoes he wore.

Instead of answering the question, he told me how he loved dancing, and how in his younger days he worked his way past those massive feet to winning dance contests and women on ballroom floors. In fact that's how he met the woman he'd been married to for over fifty years, he said, and though "neither one of them could barely breathe" they both still sometimes danced together in their living room up until her death two years before.

That topic somehow led to trips he had taken, which led to another of his loves -- cars, especially the cars he had once owned -- and most memorably how challenging it had always been to find cars he could comfortably drive with his 6'5" frame and those enormous feet. From there he meandered down other paths and I ate my Quarter Pounder and really listened, not because all of his tales were interesesting but because he was. All but three or four strands of grey hair had departed his scalp, his skin was fragile paper, his voice sanded half away, and the conversation was clearly a difficult workout for his lungs, and yet his passion for life burst through his every word, his eyes, his being.

That is why, though I was fifteen and a horde of my friends were loitering in the parking lot outside, I remained and even sat down next to his attendant -- a short Hispanic woman in her thirties who smiled nonstop but never said a word save those she whispered at the very end -- to listen to this man for a good twenty minutes. And that is why -- along with the fact that they came from a man with such enormous feet, and along with the fact that they're true -- his final words to me became such a core part of me.

After we had already exchanged pleasant goodbyes, as his attendant was just starting to roll him away (I would've likely stayed even longer; they were on some obvious fixed and well-rehearsed schedule), he tapped her hand which was their shared signal to stop. He craned his neck slowly back toward me.

"I'm around old folks like me all day long," he said. "They're full of both good stories and lots of complaints. But with a few exceptions there's only one thing any of them who regret anything at all regret and it's this: they regret the things they didn't try and do. Remember that."

I remembered that. To be honest it is a tenet my own Mother and a handful of excellent teachers like Ms. Lillian McCabe had already helped to instill in me, but somehow this vibrant, ancient, big-footed stranger in the wheelchair at McDonald's gave succinct voice to it.

And I've tried to live my life with it at the forefront of my mind. Oh sure, I've misinterpreted it at times (moreso when I was younger but still here and there), I've failed at following through on it at other times (again moreso when I was younger but still here and there), but I've always strived to find my way back to it. I've worked to instill it in my kids, I've shared it with my wife and other loved ones, and I've incorporated it into my books like Beyond Stone and Steel and my other writings.

And I intend to convey it here. This blog will be about enjoying life. Jumping in. Trying things. Living deeply versus merely existing. (It will, from time to time, focus on some of the barriers to that living deeply, as my "How We Get You" columns do.)

This blog will focus on things that you may not have experienced before -- in food, travel, the arts, sports, games, conversation, spirituality, thought, you name it -- but that you'd likely find an intense experience, meaning it will contribute to your growth in some way, small or large, and help you become that much happier.

This blog will remind you that, when you're there on your deathbed, you won't regret not having worked even more overtime or not having watched enough TV. No matter how miniscule or enormous your feet are, no matter who or how many tell you that you can't or you shouldn't, my mission is to help everyone remember that the only things you will likely regret when you're there on your deathbed are the things you didn't try and do.

As she was pushing the old man in the wheelchair away, in case you're wondering, his attendant who hadn't said a word prior to this turned to me and whispered, "He says his shoes are size 23; they're actually just size 21. But he could really dance."