Grampa in Training (GiT)

Object Lesson Book NOW on Sale ON LINE!

2012-11-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

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ATONEMENT	The Parable of the Bicycle
ATONEMENT	The Corollary to the Parable of the Bicycle –
ATONEMENT	Heavenly Father Will Help You Create a Masterpiece
CHASTITY	Lifesaving Purity
CHOICE	A CTR Youth Leadership Lesson with A Ring To It
CLUTTER	What You See Is What You Do!
ADVICE	Gratitude For Counsel
ETERNITY	Eternity Is A Piano Wire
FILTH	Choosing The Best Media
GENEALOGY	Who Shall Say His Generations
GOALS	Come, Dream With Me … Outloud!
GODHOOD	What Does God Do For A Living?
HOLY GHOST	The Holy Ghost As A Comforter
HOLY GHOST	Parable Of The Conductor’s Baton
HUMOR	Steak Center Restaurants: Never A Dry, Boring Meating!
IMAGE	The Real Final: His Image In Your Countenance
KINDNESS	The Man In The Muffler
MISSIONARIES	Some Advice For My Brother Who Will Soon Serve A Mission
MISSIONARIES	Missionaries: Enthusiastic Creativity!
PRAYER	Handcart Angel Responds To Prayer
REPENTANCE	Salt & Pepper: Repentance and the Atonement
RESURRECTION	Memorial Paper Doll
REVELATION	You Are His Clear Channel
SACRIFICE	Sacrifice: Stay Up Late With Your Family,
SCRIPTURES	After All, We Teach The Old Testament
SCRIPTURES	Scripture Study Cuts The Static
TEACHING	As You Teach – Get ‘em Up And Moving
TEACHING	The Best Church Instructors Know How To “Play The Organ”
TEACHING	Pride Falleth Before The Teaching
TEACHNG	The Enduring List
TESTIMONY	Sharing Your Testimony
TESTIMONY	Layers of Testimony
TESTIMONY	Friends and Testimonies: Black Acorn Shells
TITHING	Tithing First – Apples
TRIPLE	Change, Forgive and Contribute
WORTHINESS	Clean Priesthood Vessels

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We each teach, every day, every moment of our lives. This little book will give you the inspiration needed -- with nuggets of wisdom (and pedagogical wizardry) -- to come off as the master of any moment, teaching or speaking!

The author, Jon Robert Howe, is a practiced and popular speaker and radio personality. His humor will surprise and delight you with its originality and freshness. This is a book that will aid Latter-day Saints in any speaking or teaching moment.

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Jon Robert Howe is first last, and always a seeker of truth who is happy to share--an educator experienced in multimedia ways to make learning memorable. He has been in turns a newspaper photographer, radio news broadcaster, professional Santa Claus, actor, video producer, musical playwright, graphic and Internet designer, marketing executive and innovative blogger. In his college classes,

Jon loves to teach hungry students the presentation computer techniques that he is always polishing and using. He really enjoys leading church classes using his multimedia skills to not only keep his students awake--but more, to help make the lessons “stick” in the minds and hearts of his fellow students.

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The Power of a Gentle Deadline

2012-08-30T09:53:00.001-07:00

Time Marches Inevitably On!

Bill Cosby did it best! He would deadpan a wide-eyed expression at his TV wife, Phyllicia Rashad and hold his hands palms up, raise his eyebrows and literally back away from the passing market forces about to impact one of his kids!

Talk about applying enforced helplessness! Gentle deadlines will do that for a parent (or gramparent). It's using a kind of jujitsu of what a kid really wants to do or have in the direction of what he or she needs to do to get it. (using the force of the desire to "engineer" better, more targeted behavior. It takes patience and a certain knack to hold one's senior face in a way that doesn't gloat or posture. The Power of a Gentle Deadline can work internal miracles...but there is a trick to it!

I think I first learned this skill when Gramma Rosie and I were called to be the directors of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF in our neighborhood (LDS Stake) in 1988. As we marched from the first read through rehearsals through splitting into red, blue and green teams and pulling the whole production together on the way to a Thursday April 21st Opening night, one woman came to me with a legitimate concern about her limited time planned to rehearse with the live orchestra. My patient reply was simple: "you have your minus tracks on tape and 24 hours a day, every day between now and opening night. I'll meet with you as often as you like, but our time is scheduled for the orchestra and you'll get what you can get.

Discussing this development with this slightly scared prima donna wanna be with my co-director, Gramma Rosie smiled and said she understood. "This dear sister just wants some extra attention. She's never done this before and she wants somebody, anybody to pay attention and give her some reassurance"

That's what it was! Curtain went up on schedule and the amateur Golda for the Green Team did her role very well...and without the extra time before our pit orchestra..

In a sociology class at BYU I learned that folks will work as hard for a quarter token payment as they would for $25 dollars an hour. For the joy of a new challenge and out of respect for the inner "pride" of doing one's best, it is almost always in the nature or those who are properly led to knock themselves out--to do their best and achieve a sense of satisfaction. . Sometimes fear motivates them to get going, but at the finish it's JOY that breaks the tape. We've all been taught that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well!

I've never read the statistics, but I'm guessing that well-run prisons use this principle--letting the gentle pressure of time frames and deadlines mold behavior and motivate compliance--even excellence among an otherwise rebellious prison population.

Earlier this week I met a wonderful thirty something daughter of my publisher, C. Michael Perry, who uses a simple Navy bean motivation system to get cooperation in a Sunday School class of squirmy twelve year old boys and girls at church. The goal over a quarter is to achieve a certain number of beans in the class account. Good questions and good behavior are rewarded with beans. Acting up result in beans being taken away--and resulting peer pressure to behave.

There is power in a caring indifference to time marching on when someone you have stewardship for wants something badly. Bobbing and weaving and giving advice only when called upon--that enforced helplessness that implicitly enlists the best judgement of the other person--that is shadow leadership of the best quality.

The Practical Power of a Wet Blanket

2012-08-25T10:00:00.003-07:00

Mom Ellen shared a unique insight into her daughter Beth, an 11 year old with a pure spirit recently.

"Beth isn't too popular in some circles in her 6th Grade Class," Ellen smiled. "Some of her friends think she's a wet blanket for some of their adventurous ideas!"

One more evidence Mom is getting through to a daughter on the brink of adolescence.

Gramma Rosie, Commander of the Sucker Patrol reads to
Beth and James circa 2004

Gramma Rosie and I have known Beth since she and her family moved into the other end of our duplex eight years ago. She was three years old, raised in a family with regular family prayer, nightly family dinners, weekly family home evening and home school. She is at once obedient and curious; intelligent and wise; fun and flirty; industrious and a piano virtuoso--in short: The perfect kid!

Lesser mortals hate perfect kids!

Great Gramparents love 'em--and provide encouragement for even better being. Leader/parents should spend time and energies encouraging good projects and avoid harping to stop lesser initiatives!

One day, we invited Beth and her little brother Preston over to test out a bright red toaster oven I'd aquired for my Santa business. My mom learned to cook on a friend's Easy Bake oven..and in that tradition, we wanted to be good friends with a skill building experience as a gift. In situations like this I try to provide all the fixin's and let a kid test out theories. Beth had helped fix dinner at home....but coooking for the sheer joy of it was a little new to her.

As our conversation progressed that Saturday morning, Beth was on the way to making little pizzas with frozen biscuit dough, little pepperonis and bottled pizza sauce. I didn't know how to turn on or modulate the newly purchased oven---and neither did Beth. (Her little brother was having fun as four year olds do with Spider Man toys in the corner) but in the same spirit that Madam Curie must have had to test pitchblend, Beth started carefully adjusting knobs on the little thing. Lights came on and off, heating elements glowed and went dark and it was everything I could do to keep Gramma Rosie from swooping in with a solution or advice. After a while, Beth figured it out for me!

Her mood, as coached by encouraging parents has been, "I don't know, but I'll try!" You can't ask for any better attitude than that!

As for Wet Blanket---Beth doesn't go to slumber parties. Wiser heads discourage the gang gatherings to pierce ears, try unknown slosh and tell forbidden secrets of the flesh.

Stealing hubcaps; shop lifting; other thrill-a-minute activities get run through a parent-coached filtering system in Beth's head...and guide her along life's way. Good on ya, Mom and Dad!

"Train up a child in the way she should go, and when she is old she will not depart from it!" Proverbs 22:6

Some child in ten or fifteen years is going to be born to Beth as a young mother and be the better for it!

I run several blogs: Teaching Moment Boosters, Santa's Cosmic Sleigh (Howe to Build your Own North Pole!) and the Naysayer--mostly political commentary and reflections. These blogs are all about different aspects of human engineering.

The practical value of a wet blanket is the down to earth restraint that comes with age, experience and caution. It has to be strong and deals from a position of strength, of cool, of popularity and just being right most of the time. Beth has this quality. So does our daughter Sally. We call it the Old Head on Young Shoulders Syndrome.

The Naysayer has a place in civilization. In the four personality quadrants, the Guardian is a personna of reserve--rarely jolly or adventurous; not often innovative or daring--certainly creative in a more negative way than gangbuster positive --but the power of NO and the guts to make it stick is a virtue.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks teaches there are eight kinds of "revelation" and restraint is one of those.

I've heard the story of a powerful naysayer in a closed door meeting of an LDS Stake High Council, who countered a proposal by a stake president with a firm NUH-UH!- for a great idea that would have taken a lot of work. It was scotched by man who was in a position to counsel and gently but firmly refuse an idea at the very beginning.

Of course the stake president had not done his homework and pre-sold the idea beforehand--and ultimately that did him in.

The idea was potentially a wonderful one!

The concept was to hold a giant fair in a nearby public school yard-meadow with hand carts, food, fun and festivities--to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the pioneers' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

Arranging for the handcarts, gathering all the food and marshalling the local saints' participation was a daunting task, but overcome in the mind of the church leader with the thought that rubbing elbows in such joyful toil would bring Saints together and sharpen their appreciation for the sacrifices of their forbearers in the Valley--but one man, one jolly loving man said, "NOPE!" and caused more than a little concern.

Wet blankets can stop blessings, too!

I know another man on the same High Council who was very good at stopping half-baked ideas from going forward. This attorney used scripture, an encyclopedic knowledge of the Handbook of Instructions and common sense to send otherwise interesting proposals back to the drawing board for more work and more thought, seldom to see the light of day again! Today that man serves at the highest local level of leadership.

To Beth and the other Naysayers who hold to a standard at some often temporary cost to themselves. You go girls, uh, guy(s) Progress half done is often worse than none at all!

JWH

Ingratitude -- a Sin?

2012-08-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Are some people weeds? Are some people such users they become losers?

At our house we call them--the user women who bring treats and kisses in exchange for FREE mechanical work. Chocolate chips and a promise of a little TLC goes a long way with a big hearted son.

Thunder-thighs have followed our handy son all his young adult life.

EVERYBODY LOVES A HANDY MAN!

In the WORK AND THE GLORY the blacksmith-skilled son leads the vanguard pioneers building a handy boat on top of a wagon that can be inverted and sailed across any river or stream. Brother Brigham calls on him for help in the practical problems crossing the plains. Blacksmithss in fiction and in real life like Holladay's Blacksmith Bishop David Brinton were prized. Like German craftsmen they were respected as much or more than medical doctors or college professors.

My how times have changed.

Noah and Gabriel's attractive little mommie called for help with the power windows in her car as she got ready to move back home to Richfield. Our handy son tagged along and played Daddy to the e three year old and newborn....while Mommie went on job interviews and reconnected with geriatric gramparents.

While in the little Utah Town Jeff made friends, was offered a job at the local Ford dealership and turned the water on in the little home that mommie and the boys will soon call home. It took a small pair of vise-grip pliars, some straining elbow grease and Jeff's usual giant heart.

Did Mommie come up with baked goods or a hug? Nope!

Jeff got to see a new part of the map and meet some wonderful friends of mommie's. He bonded especially closely with Mom's gramprents...and her sons...but the object of his affection, well, gave him a little respect and faint praise.

As Frank Sinatra sings in the original English: Say La Veeeee!

Or: That's Life, like the people say, ridin' high in April! Shot down in May! Few Handy men die of a broken heart...but he's back, sadder, wisser defiant and turning his attentions back to China.

Gramkids for Sale!

2012-08-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

How much is that gramkid
in the window?

Everytime I see a kid in a grocery cart, out of the blue this question springs to my lips: "Wow, they sell THOSE here? How much do you pay HERE? (Insert Mom's smile and on we go!)

I would use a question like that to get a Santa conversation started...but last night that gramkid for sale idea took a wonderful welcome turn.

Our son has been penpaling a lovely Chinese damsel...and his prayers have included Sanji almost every night for months.....then suddenly his plans to take a trip to China were set aside.

An old College Chum he fell in love with as his own first marriatge was winding down called to ask a favor...She was moving to a town a couple of hundred miles away and our son's free mechanical skills were, well, badly NEEDED.

My brother Tom and I had a conversation that life is lived on "TICKETS!" Our son grows a great garden, shared super computer tricks and tips...and lives in our basement (has for the last three years) decompressing from a few sad decisions--among them foreclosure on a HUD house his former wife NEEDED, a six figure debt in college loans in computer science and a Kevin Spacey style downward swoop as a strategic way of holding off the EX and Sally Mae while he decides his next steps.

NOTE: My own family has had a kid for sale. The late uncle Zachary Champlin was an only child of an Air Force Officer at F.E. Warren Air Force Base and principal subject of a sad little newspaper ad in the Cheyenne Wyoming Tribune: Child Available for adoption. Recently widowed, cannot do career and little cute dark headed boy at same time. Call: 555-5555.

Father left son and a small suitcase and went back to work. The Family who adopted him raised him well in modest circumstances and Logan Utah Attorney and church Leader Elray L. Christiansen paid for his tuition to Utah State Law School. He married my aunt Helen Marie Hunt and raised nine children in a spirit of humble defiance. (The girls have his gorgeous black hair and the boys inherited he Hunt family bald gene..and we are cosins still after all these years.

Tonight Jeff is nursing Noah and Gabriel's mommy's car to Richfield...and I was proud to be able to make a gift of a Benjamin Franklin--and a couple of iced big cups of powdered Tang...and Jeff left for a couple of days of instant fatherhood.

Once upon a time we hosted Mommy and Noah, before newborn Gabiel arrived...and young Noah was full of questions for the then 2 year old. We have some stair blocking kid proofing and closed doors hat left the little guy magnets and plush toys to entertain himself while we got better acquainted with Mom.

Years ago we informed our dear first born (after Rosie's son Michael) that his "job' was to make and take 1000 dates--His Liz was number 75 as I remember. After ten years of marriage (off and on) Jeff is sadder, but wiser. Excessive debt won't break up the second marraige. Discipline to a budget broadcast on our main screen TV and a gentle, healthy dose of Vitamin N all of which would have saved much of his former relationship...that's what Jeff is taking back to a second marriage at 36.

I married a ready-made family, in fact Rosie's six year old proposed to me because he wanted ME to be his Daddy. We had fun...and then I took him to church. Matthew 5:48 kicked in and my patience with a 7 year old figiting didn't last long. Parents and gramparents should take it easy on young'ins who figit in church lest they drive the youngster away.

Carol Sullivan told me the story of her oldest son, Big Mike's Little Mike who was quite the drummer as a teenager. At the big Talent Night over at the church, Little Mike was adjusting his precious set of drums when a leader with a chip on his music appreciation shoulder stalked up to the teenager. It was the sxties and the Beatles had just invaded.

"And what are those, young man?" the leader sneered!

"Drums...aren't they great?" Mike responded eyes shining.

Then the unexpected from the youth leader: "Young man, take those drums, put them back in their boxes and take them out of here and don't you ever come back!

Great parents, leaders and gramparents should never be in the business of stopping a kid doing what he shouldn't---unless it's life threateneing: Traffic, drugs, unmarried sex etc.

Authority figures should develop the skill of helping kids GOTTAWANNA and start the good things. And then follow through

Forty years later in our own Talent Night a young break dancer showed off his skill developed on the street with a friend from downtown...and the crowd stopped the show and stomped and cheered! What a difference in tolerance and appreciation has happened in the same church where Little Mike learned to be obedient to a cretin.

Gramma Rosie, who listens to every post before I publish mused, "some people don't have the good sense God gave Geese!"

Over the last three years especially, our zero tolerance has grown to include a Sleeping Beauty who wouldn't help chop onions in our kitchen as she auditioned for our family...even after Gramma Rosie showed her how to use lemon juice to stop the smell on her delicate little fingers.

When one girl who should have known better got hooked on a bit too much forbidden slosh, we bit our tongue and hoped the situation would right itself.

When another confessed mental problems we wished her well and our son made a better choice.

Noah and Gabriel's mommy has never demanded any child support from her sons' father and we pray that someday the sperm donor for each child will be brought to jusice for the privilege of participation at the conception only to waltz away blameless! If called upon, this bunkhouse lawyer will recommend a paternity DNA check and regular paynents to be court awarded if necssary to the kids college fund.

Valentine's day is the target....so stay tuned!

"But I'm doin' it Better than YOU DID!"

2012-08-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a new book entitled MARSHMALLOW MARKETING for our fall term at Highland Community Education where I have led a class in web design and marketing for several years.

Caught one in the eye
during rehearsal. Pain is FAKED for
the camera

My teaching style is collaborative, and as it says in my profile, I seek the truth wherever I find it...and then we share as fellow students.

Since the 24th of July (See Bennee Brothers Marshmallow Team Star on KTVX ABC 4 Utah) I've thoroughly enjoyed getting up early and "checking the trap line" Watching the statistics grow and grow.

If a trapper doesn't check the trap line every day he misses the opportunity cost of harvesting the pelt and re setting the trap. The Internet has made that grueling chore a treat! (See MARSHMALLOW MARKETING the little blog post that became a pretty effective TEXT BOOK)

This whole excitement; the anticipation of seeing what's out there...and the varied countries' representatives that check in on what seems to be a pretty regular basis has made my life exciting again at 65. Statistically I can "sense", for example that I have a couple of folks in RUSSIA who either read me in the original English or have a pretty effective translation system.

Welcome to the
United Nations
on my blog!

No comments yet in the Russian Language...but I have a translation app if my new friend(s) wanted to leave a trail ?!?!.

Please feel included WHATEVER wonderful country you come from to read my stuff. As a comic and comedian, I love to see the whites of your eyes. Statistically I get to do that as I check the trap line of my blog daily.

(Somebody said that Russians are pretty universally bored to live in America because there is no Secret Police to dodge and out smart. Makes perfect sense to me)

There's always that danger of being "found out" but after Peristoika I thought a certain freedom existed there I'd love to correspond with someone of a like mind through the comments section of a favorite post.

To confess, I have only had 8 comments on this blog since it's beginning and four of those were tests that originated with ME!

Now to the Trapper story:

Once upon a time in the old West of America an Old Trapper was preparing to retire and move to town. Like any good entrepreneur, he decided to sell his most prized possession--a trap line with all the gear, traps included....and the benefit of his wisdom for more than 20 years of making a very tidy living in the snows of the Rocky Mountains.

He even advertised in the local frontier paper and an applicant showed up. The new guy was young and eager and took written notes as the old trapper explained the nuances and intricacies of his beloved Trap Line.

As part of the deal he agreed to visit from time to time and do a little coaching. The day came. The youngster signed a contract, made a small down payment and the Old Trapper gave up his cabin to the youngster and moved to a small hotel room in town, preparing to build a new cabin on the outskirts of the little village. Everything went well for the old trapper and one day, he remembered he had made a pledge to return now and again...and figured that today would be the day.

It was a bright, golden morning in early winter...when the traps best yielded their fuzzy, furry bounty. Old Trapper thought he would catch the newby enjoying the best success of his young new career! With some anticipation Old Trapper snowshoed through the snow at the end of the trail and gently knocked on the door of his own old cabin. A wisp of smoke from the fireplace indicated New Trapper would be at home....and a plaintive cry came from within: "Go Away!"

This disturbed the older man. Trappers like most mountain men, welcomed company and New Trapper was obviously NOT happy to see anyone. It was the first sign that ALL was not well with New Trapper or their Trap Line. If he was following instructions he should be rolling in furs and able to pay Old Trapper a handsome percentage, but alas there was trouble in paradise.

Slowly Old Trapper creaked open the cabin door. Locks that far out there were unthinkable....and there was New Trapper still in bed gone past noon.

"Oh, its you!" the younger man muttered.

"Yes, I came to celebrate!"

"Celebrate WHAT!" Young Trapper said suprized.

"Our terrific success!" came back the concerned reply. "What's the trouble, son?"

"Well," New Trapper began with a little enthusiasm. "I've made a few CHANGES!!!!!"

"Changes? Hows that goin' for you?" disappointed Older Trapper sat down in a chair he had built himself, as if watching his future flying slowly through the "winder" of the old cabin!

New Trapper explained that since he was alone...he lacked the discipline to keep to the rigors of the Older man's instructions. "Oh the traps are all full when I check 'em...but that's only once or twice a week! Old Trapper shook his head and buried his face in his hands.

The trap line that had fed and clothed him and gave him money for his savings and plenty of coins to jingle in his jeans when he got down to town in the Summer had been neglected, squandered, effectively destroyed until somebody came back with the simple discipline to check the traps every day.

Then new trapper admitted it wasn't working as well as the Old Man had promised and added the boast of youth and inexperience..."But I'm don' it Better than YOU DID!"

Old Trapper just laughed and planned to work the rest of the winter making sure junior got up and out to check the trap lines EVERY DAY!

NOTE: One of the things I teach is how to make money with your blog! Adsense places related four line ads in the margins and at the bottom. I told a Web Design and Marketing class that if enough folks clicked the Adsense ads, and I got paid a percentage of the "click rate" and a healthy percentage for anyone smart enough to actually buy something, by the end of the term we'd have enough money in my account for a little ice cream social on the last evening of our class. OOOPPPPS! Didn't read enough of the small print in the agreement I signed with Adsense...and I got a CEASE AND DESIST order by E-mail and the Adsense content was yanked. Double Oops!!!

I appealed and was denied,vdfee- sine die! I learned a hard lesson and we did the pot luck thing for the last night and had ice cream and cake ANYWAY! So there, Adsense.

Finally, One of my favorite blogs is about the nuances of making money IN OTHER WAYS WITH YOUR BLOG--with a little Christian philosophy on handling that beloved filthy lucre. Send me a comment and I'll give you the link!!! The idea is that a blog like this with more than 3,000 hits over two years is approaching critical mass. Advertisers for, well, Depends, Arthritis Cream and geriatric advice are out there looking for just this kind of blog. They want exclusivity and could care less if Adsense has bounced me...so that's the next step.

My primary goal was to write a GRAMPA IN TRAINING Book as the saleable component of a geriatric speaking career. I'm finalizing the first of several volumes for paper and ink production, but by the end of September the free blog will be limited to the first 25 words of the blog and a generous offer to swipe a piece o' plastic and buy the post for a DOLLAR A HOLLAR. (That's an old peanut whistle small market radio term for cheap advertising. It's been my "design" to follow my mentor Vernon Thompson's sage idea that people who give their e-mail and download a PDF of the post (or a small book for a small price) will qualify him/herself for a bigger PDF for a bigger price and possibly for something even bigger.

That would have worked, but a stubborn boss turned down the idea in favor of sending out speaking teams to seminars and buying a coaching package if a free cruise was included for a multi-thousand dollar price tag. Trouble was there WAS NO FREE CRUISE and if the real estate market hadn't tanked in 2008 and bankrupted our little juggernaut, the CANNED SPAM ACT and our own dissatisfied customers would have shut us down anyway.

As a last gasp, little boss man, the tugboat captain, changed the name of the company, doubled the price of the package...and came with crocodile tears to the last meeting of a shocked staff to announce he "HAD TO CLOSE THE DOORS" and give us good references to the local Unemployment office under the guise of Reduction in Force.

If you don't have a budget, but you do have a Masters in Business with honors from a prestigious local university....sometimes you think you can outrun the problems "by the seat of your pants".... IT WAS NOT TO BE! Like the Young Trapper he failed to check the Trap Lines every day. Sad, really!

Marshmallow Marketing - The beginning of a whole new book

2012-08-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

First there was the appe--then, soon after came the marshmallow, then the TV appearance, then the email on the 24th of July and now.....the text book entitled MARSHMALLOW MARKETING. This is the story of a ten year product developoment cycle and brand building project that all reached a high point on July 19th on air of a mid morning show on KTVX ABC 4 Utah in Salt Lake City. Enjoy this over and over as I have..then take a look at the statistics and the unexpected fun below the video

(Credit goes to Peter Bennee for the still pictures)

Here's the provenance:

On Thursday, July 19, 2012 the founder of Grampa in Training on blogspot was invited to demonstrate Marshmallow shooters on the popular Salt Lake City Channel ABC 4 Utah (KTVX) Jon Robert Howe, World Class Santa and toy critic appered with the Bennee Brothers All Star Marshmallow Team, and co-hosts Nicea Degering, Gretchen Hansen (former Miss USA and new KTVX News anchor Ann Sterling.

Marshmallow All star Captain, Cole Bennee, 13, and his brothers Noah, 11, and and Jackson (9) , Prme Shooters for the team were joined by Miles Mootonen (13) , Deputy Captain and his brother Max (9), the Sargent Major of the team. MacKay Brown, Assistant Target Coordinator whot color coded Marshmallow on the air in their television debut. Still photos of the production were taken by the Bennee's fther, Team photographer Peter Bennee.

Following the appearance (on the 24th of July--a state wide holiday in Utah--Jon Robert Howe emailed a database of 800 of his friends the message and pictures that MARSHMALLOW SHOOTERS ARE MAKING A COME BACK (see the insert when Jon announces the blog address near the end of this six minute segment.

Jon also teaches WEB DESIGN & MARKETING at Highland Community Education. The apperance on Channel 4 was the culmination of a ten year product development and brand creation for Jon's innovative GRAMPA IN TRAINING HALL OF FAME project.

When 2012 classes resume at Highland, Jon has a treat in store for his Fall Semester Marketing and Web Design Students. Using the STATS feature of the Blogspot program, Jon was able to measure a return on his INVESTMENT/email campaign of nearly 7%, an astouding marketing achievement, even among ""warm leads"

For a more in depth analysis of the MARSHMALLOW MARKETING pheonomenon that spurred the writing of the course's new text book,this is the place and (if you live in the Salt Lake City Ogden Provo metroplex consider signing up for the Web Design and Marketing Class to learn how to duplicate the Marshmallow Marketing model.

Here's the contact and address information for Suzanne Hammond, the Director at Highland Community Eduction. : Call her after 3 PM, August 27th, 2012for evening class information at Highland High School Highland Community Learning Center 2166 South 1700 East, 84106, 801-481-4891 2:00 - 8:00 M - Th highlandce@slcschools.org or go to slcschools.org to register on the district's website.

Jon Robert Howe also teaches a Training the Broadcast Voice class using his text book entitled, VOICE BOX TO CASH BOX and a Santa Claus Training Class with his forty year memoir entitled HOWE TO BUILD YOUR OWN NORTH POLE. EAch member of the class who successfully compoletes the clas gets a free copy of the appropriate text book in a bound and autographed copy. (Duing the class students can mark the text with highlighters and make notes in the margin with a post it note attached--and the personalized book is presented at the end of the six week term as a functional diploma of sorts)

If you would like to send in a nomination for someone to be named to the GRAMPA IN TRAINING HALL OF FAME, download a nomination form at http://grampaintraining.blogspot.com/2010/05/nomination-questionnaire-for-great.html. There is charge for this FREE public recognition of a heroic grampa in your life.

Go to http://grampaintraining.blogspot.com/2010/05/nomination-questionnaire-for-great.html

Understanding the phenomenon of MARSHMELLOW MARKETING requires a git of preparation. Einstein was always quoted by my mother, Delma Howe who console me with this quote, and she's ritght. Working outside the box spending 80 percent of my time dreaming and working on my tan has resulted in this concept.

Bennee Brothers Marshmallow Shooters star with Grampa on GOOD THINGS UTAH (ABC 4 - KTVX)

2012-07-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

Happy 24th of July! It's not a Federal Holiday...and post offices will be open for business...but throughout Utah, Family Reunions are celebrating the biggest barbeque of the year with a big Salt Lake City parade that's been going on here since 1847! It's PIONEER DAY otherwise known as the Days of '47!

Among the three legged races for dads and daughters, sawdust hunts for quarters for toddlers and dozens of other wonderful games, teens and tweens especially will limber up their personally crafted MARSHMALLOW SHOOTERS (18-24" PVC pipes with colorful decorations) and out spit each other for fun and prizes.

After my Holladay, Utah friends the Bennee Brothers Marshmallow Shooters appeared on local television with me last Thursday, July 19th the hits on this blog have gone crazy!

Welcome, you Teens and Tweens, Grammas and Grampas (and Parents of all ages) who clicked in to find out how to do it....especially after I sent out hundreds of emails with this message:

Click this link to see the 5' 30" segment from Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Bennee Brothers Marshmallow Shooters are Cole Bennee, Captain; Miles Mottonen , Co-Captain; Noah and Jackson Bennee, Prime Shooters; Max Mottonen , Sgt. Major and McKay Brown, Assistant Target Coordinator. (Watch for the link in a future post to the YouTube report with more behind the scenes pictures and video by Shooter Team photographer Peter Bennee, proud father of the core team leaders!)

I am indebted to a former Web Design and Marketing student and great friend, Winter Redd for the report below about how to build your own Marshmallow Shooters, targets and unique "ammunition" Winter and her husband, Lee, publish a wonderful blog about their newly wed adventures...and this is a wonderful example of their great work:

I use Marshmellow Shooters in my Santa visits--and found a new wrinkle in the Redd Party post: Including crafty fuzz balls and ear plugs.

Winter is a pharmacist at the Unversity of Utah and a former student at Highland Community Ed Web Design and Marketing several semesters ago. I subscribe to her blog and she follows mine. This is the first time I've copied and published her material. Hope this is a enough credit, where this unique very creative activity is involved.

(As a matter of safety, I've included a cautionary note about using swim goggles or the ones you use in a woodshop to protect your eyes from flying sawdust or wood chips) Marshmallow Target Shooting is the best with some low key, fun grampuncular supervison encouraged. It actually beats paint balls for Teens, Tweens and even little kids...and it's delicious!) Good luck keeping the ammunition from "disappearing"! Color coded separation of multi colored mini marshmallows will help kids eat their "own" shots, if you get my overarching drift?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Don't worry, the pain is
faked! Don't know why
my big glasses are on my head!

NOTE 1: One thing we learned in the rehearsal the day before the TV debut was that if shooters put several mini marshmallows in their mouths at once, the projectiles will get sticky and stick to the targets. As you can see, I made the mistake of asking our shooters to fire at the camera...and caught one in the eye! It didn't do any damage, but like the boxing post two posts below, caution should be taken....I found swim goggles three for five dollars at RiteAid...and the kids get to keep the goggles and the shooters at the end of the day (if you simulate a paint ball kid vs kid contest)!

NOTE 2: Always plan to give a prize to participants to pick up the stray projectiles that aren't already confiscated or consumed! In the military it's called POLICING YOUR BRASS...and it will save many a gramparent's back bending down to pick up the left over ammo......This fun is best done outside, on clean grass where the five second rule applies!

Here's Winter's story, pictures and videos:

As I mentioned earlier, I was at Girls Camp a week ago.

The theme for camp was "Sweet is the work of a daughter of God"

and they played up the "sweet" part by making it Willy-Wonk-aesque
and candy-focused.

All the girls had different colored shirts indicating their "sweet" group.

I was asked to help with a field day activity at camp; there are fun races and
games that are set up as
"Candyland" on a big field. Lee suggested a game with
marshmallow blow dart guns.

Excellent idea!

(For those of you who may not know, it's a blow dart
gun made out of PVC pipes
and marshmallows are used
as ammunition. More on technique later.)

It's really easy to make these blow dart guns.
Head on over to Home Depot or Lowes and go to the plumbing aisle.
You want the 1/2 inch PVC pipes.

$1.63/pipe--that's cheap entertainment and fun!

Oh dear! They are 10 feet long and I needed about 10 to
12 inch pieces, but I don't own a pair of pipe cutters.
Thankfully the Home Depot does (plus a hacksaw or two for bigger
pipes) and let's you use them at the store.

Feeling all handy cutting my pipes at the HD.

Because of the candy theme, Lee helped by "candy
cane-ing" them with red, green and yellow electrical tape.

Lee did a great job making these plain white pipes look like candy canes.

I wanted to tie the blow dart to the candy theme, so we
came up with a game called The Peppermint Ninja
Pow! (Note: We're into ninjas.)

I think my sign turned out pretty cute!

Then we made these targets with varying hole sizes and point values
from foam core.

Easy to make and looks pretty good!

Okay, now let's talk ammunition. Marshmallows are the best in my and Lee's opinion,
but I needed to think of something different since we needed to re-use the ammo at
camp. Marshmallows are not awesome if you need to re-use them.

So I tried out a couple of other things:

Foam ear plugs (purchased at Home Depot for about $3.00 for 7 pair) and
Fluffy craft pompoms (purchased at Walmart for about $3.00 for a pack of 250 varying sizes of poofs).

Lee tested all of these options.

I opted for the fluffy pompoms for the activity since I could buy
them in bulk for pretty cheap. The activity turned out pretty well
and the girls had a lot of fun.

Lee, of course, had to show me the superiority of marshmallows, especially
in machine-gun mode!

Gross! I always put the marshmallow in the gun then blow. Boys and their
spitting skills--sheesh!

Anyway, I think this would be an awesome large group date or mutual activity
if you don't mind getting hit with slightly sticky marshmallows.

Have fun!

Marshmallow Blow Dart Guns

Supplies:

10 to 12 inch long pieces of 1/2 inch PVC pipe

Marshmallows (or foam earplugs or fluffy craft pompoms)

During the Candyland field day activity

It's a Marshmallow World on ABC 4 Utah

2012-07-19T06:49:00.002-07:00

July 18, 2012 on Good Things Utah, KTVX-TV ABC 4 Utah
Musical Guest Billy Dean
Natalie and Kate, Nicea Degering's two daughters

TV Producers are usually invisible. Rox, the Executive Producer (the center of the composite above and below) is much shorter than the lovely co-hosts she guides through the hour- long Good Things Utah. Rox invited me to come to yesterday's production of "GTU" a day early in preparation for my Grampa in Training demonstration of MARSHMALLOW SHOOTERS.

Since I had never met Rox, I asked for her at Rosa's receptionist desk at the beautiful TV station on 1700 South at 1300 West in Salt Lake City, Utah when I arrived at 9:15 AM for the 10 AM production.

Mom Nicea, Producer Rox and Kate, GTU Mascot and a new friend

I smiled when little red-headed, seven year old Kate came through the door...and I gave her a big smile and the words, "ROX! You're much younger than you seemed in all those e-mails."

The real Rox, who was standing right behind her just smiled--I was flirting with the youngest daughter of the anchor of "Good Things Utah" host Nicea Degering. Kate is the mascot of the production, the darling of the drop dead gorgeous women who co-host the show. (including Gretchen Jensen and Brianne Johnson with cameras above)

Kate is a regular around the station when her Mom is working, an old hand at greeting guests and guiding them through the backstage labyrinth that surrounds the main news and production studio at the Salt Lake ABC Affiliate.

Kate believed the red suit and the white beard...and told her mother she was buddy-buddy with Santa!

(So Nicea told me when we finally met during the picture taking after the show!) Nicea is the long term co-host if the show, a very tall, VEEERRRRRY thin woman I had watched at 10 AM for years--and a classy lady!

Stay tuned. The next post will have pictures of the Bennee Brother All Stars using PVC Shooters to hit three colorful targets on the classiest show on Salt Lake City Daytime Television!

Boxer Joe: Growing Up In a Big Family

2012-06-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

This is a story about a scrappy little friend of mine named Joe, one of 7, soon to be 8 little Dutch Kids just through the block

Among my many toys for teaching delayed gratification is two sets of boxing gloves and 2 bright red protective head gears. Joseph liked the idea of beating his cousins one by one in the squared circle…and he shouted to be first in the ring.

Joe’s first opponent was Tanner, a scrappy little neighbor from across the street who held his own…and the slugfest went a couple of rounds.

“DON’T HIT HIM IN THE FACE!”, his mother shouted at her tough little kid—still standing and smacking his scrappy little friend.

It’s hard to explain to a mom—---the boxing gloves and the face mask keeps the blood well inside the nose of one’s opponent…but the fight did seem to go on and on.

Click this Link to see this Post on YouTube

After five rounds both kids were breathing pretty hard, so we took a break and I changed Joe’s boxing buddy… His older brother, James who out weighs his little brother and has much longer arms.

All bullies crumple when opposed by superior force and it wasn’t even close….the otherwise mild-mannered James just stuck out his arm against Joe’s head gear and kept the frantically swinging Joseph at arms lengths shouting to me:

“ Brother Howe…make him fight…IT’S NOT FAIR!” (Fairness always favor’s the young complainer’s point of view.) After a few minutes of being out maneuvered by a chuckling older brother, Joe threw off the gloves and stalked off to his room in the basement (IT WAS A FEW MINUTES) before a sheepish Joe returned to the fun and nobody seemed to notice.

Kids like Joe count on the attention that sulking and fighting attract. The good news is it doesn’t take Joe long to jump back in (IT’S ALL PART OF GROWING UP IN A BIG FAMILY)

GIT/JRH

When is a Tatoo not just a Tatoo?

2011-12-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

I have never understood tatoos--until today.

Much in the manner of a Jewish Prayer Shawl or a Catholic genuflecting in true humility, I learned today that a tatoo can be an, "Outward Sign of an Inward Grace." A communications tool of the best that's in us.

Sally is a lovely single woman in her early thirties. She has great friends of both sexes, but for full time companionship, she has decided that Dani is her lifetime companion. They don't go to protest marches, at least, not any more--and they've found contentment after one successful house sale and one near foreclosure together.

Today at a family dinner she has kind enough (though she didn't need to ask our permission) ask if Rosie and I would be offended if she got a small discreet tatoo in the form of a ring around the base of the fourth finger of her left hand--and she had her reasons at the ready.

There is not "convenient easy shorthanded way" to communicate to an interested guy that she's in a comitted relationship. In our culture the wedding ring does that easily and quickly with a minimum of confusion. Trouble is, Sally is a health care professional and washes her hands multiple times daily. The water gets in under the metal, no matter of what kind, and eats away at her sensitive skin.

A discreet tatoo (technically against company policy where she works, would help solve that problem.

Of course we said yes! We love her, we support her and her self defense tactics, however unique and personal.

Sally explained that a well-to do man of 57 asked her out, as do many who receive her care--and explained when she changed the subject discreetly that she was wearing no ring.

We laughed and told her that since she was obviously that "scrumptious" she should't be put off by interest from the opposite sex though she is interested only in her own---right now! Her companion, Dani, said she had told her the same thing more than once.

I took the opportunity to tell her that years ago when she got together with Dani we went to our Bishop and asked him what we should do. So many were kicking otherwise loving and lovable children into the street for that choice. He gave us wise advice and we've found it easy to follow with our daughter-- "Just love her!"

I had worried that she would never know the joys of motherhood---at least that's what we used to call it--but somehow both she and Dani have managed to avoid all the having of a baby and still raise two fine sons, Dani's nephews who come to them when real parental guidance is needed. At one point the two boys lived with Sally and Dani when their mother couldn't find any other place for the money she was bringing in. It was Sally and Dani who got the pre teen boys up and off to school, helped them with their lessons, talked to them about the facts of life and became stabalizing influence in their lives.

They have since grown up and on and moved in with others leaving their Mom. When presents arrived a couple days ago, Sally and Dani got two nice offerings from the boys who always come to visit when they're in town. Their mom, sadly, got what she deserved. Nothing this year---maybe being an irresponsible birth mother will merit better treatment as these two boys turn into men...but for now.....

JRH.

The Best Cure for Anger is Delay - Socrates

2011-12-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

Consider the many benefits of writing
all your conversations for a while!

Anger can be addictive, especially late at night when the disappointments of the day magnify the emotions. A change in medication has left a gap in reason and my family must suffer as I reconnect with them through a 30 day readjustmeting period.

As in the best conversations, as host/patriarch/leader and pioneer I find I generate less friction by listening much more than I do by provoking reaction to change. My wife's encroaching deafness has provided an accidental solution to a time honed dilemma: NOTES!

Much as the portable white board revolutionized the live radio broadcast before a live audience, I have learned to carry a pad of paper and a wide tipped marker to make comments, reaction and the odd personal request.

Like he man with larangitis, I am more welcome in my own home because I temper my mercurial fits of frustration and short tempered outbursts through the filter of a brief, often complimentary note. It takes massive discipline, but it's the 21st century version of think before you speak..

Like the cooling saucer of the Senate into which the Founding Fathers hoped would cure the excesses of a hot blooded House, I am welcome back into my own home----with wise words---and the unexpected result is that I have a written record to take to a blog session that would otherwise go untouched!
JRH

BECOMING JANE -- The Singles Ward of its day

2011-12-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

The nubile Jane (Anne) Sizes up her future in two men

Anne Hathaway is the quintissential Jane Austin--the Pride and Predjudice author who parlayed pain and suffering into a comedy of manners as a young writer. Tonight as a 2011 Boxing Day treat we capped a day of family and food with a little light DVD fare--and a chick flick with a timeless message.

As I wacthed it appeared to me a Victorian dating ritual that is as old as the fifth grade school yard of any age. Though the long term appeal of enough money to sustain a fine family has been replaced with the spark of courtship and what passes for true love on campus or afterward--flirting with the eyebrows and impossible pot stirring previals in both time frames.

Even the Little League mom in Maggie Smith comes to the fore in the Victorian Age as an elderly woman fights with every weapon at her command to achieve a great companion for her dullard son.

Obese Member of of the Clean Plate Club? Guilty!

2011-10-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

Old Food Habits Die Beneath the Belt!

Two wonderful children of the Depression raised me out in Laramie, Wyoming. "Take what you eat, then eat what you take!" All five kids in our family were taught to clean our plates--and to this day, my wife expects it. No left overs! That's her battle cry!

She is the daughter of a butcher--lots of meat at dinner (our biggest meal of the day) and melt in your mouth mashed potatos are still a sign a sign of love, acceptance between us. Sadly and proudly all at once: I am a poster child for my wife's great cooking--and yet, as a diabetic, my doctor sayes I MUST lose weight! Top all these mental and engrained conflicts I have ome to accept the fact that I'm addicted to food--it's color, it's texture, it's volume and it's taste. When I go to a chinese restaurant I suffer from a syndrome with no name: My stomach is full to bursting and my brain tells me I can still eat more! What am I to do!

Exercise and eat everything I want? Nope--never happen! I'm at that age where bad knees keep me from walking. Weak ankles, low center of gravity--and a similar addiction to sitting for hours in front of the computer to write, design, do fun earn at home activities and hours and hours of church work---I'd be a basket case, but I'm just too big for the basket!

My old explanation told with a chuckle that I've always told folks about my size is getting old. "It's easier to play Santa than to lose weight!" I really want to never have to tell that joke again--but I'm in a no win situation. I love to eat--and I can't waddle away from aromatic, tasty temptation for the sake of slim!

My slat thin 35 year old son came up for a snack overheard me reading this to his mother and cut to my quick, "It's called SELF CONTROL, Dad!" he shouted. "Shut up! I said sweetly, "Shut the full plate of Thanksgiving Turkey UP!"

Modern intake philosophy have taught me to eat sparingly--cut the plate in half. I don't want to cuz I love food--especially as my wife fixes it so well and especially for me. Her self image is riding on my burping gratitude for her nightly offering of the glut of calories, fat, starch and a little sugar--with a little treat--or two or three just before bed. How can I refuse such a delicious temptress who loves me so well in so many other ways? I can't offend her with any diet plans---and to show me she REALLY loves me--She keeps it coming.

As Santa I've been trained to give out stickers and not treats because psychologists say that kids who get tasty treats from Santa to make them happy--turn to food when they're lonely and sad--and they get fat!

In her head she knows she shouldn't--but she can't help herself and as a result neither can I.

We've purified our water to keep the toxins out of my belly fat.

Breakfast is an apple--may be with a little low fat greek yogurt. I dry fry my own single egg smattering of protien wrapped in a gluten free tortilla every day at 1. I make two with the frustrated desire to eat the second one for dinner at 4--and then my sweet kitchen general wheels out the nightly feast and I crumble.

I set a goal to lose 25 pounds before my next doctor's visit--and I was well on my way until we postponed the visit for two months and I fell victim to more and more dark chocolate-- the extra piece or two of her fudgy applesauce cake--I gained back five pounds and I gave up!

The thought just came to me to buy five or six tupperware square boxes and put into each box ONLY what I could have--Each box would have a time limit--and I would eat NOTHING, I repeat N O T H I N G but what was in the boxes. Good Luck--if rules were made to be broken--these boxes would last for three days tops!

I heard about all kinds of unique diets: The Dolly Parton diet--two ice cream scoops brimming with what every you REALLY wanted to eat--and the rest of the meal: Cabbage Soup! Yummy!@#$%^&*%$#

Theres the cut the plate in half diet--but unless you put the other half of the delicious meal in a bowl, seal it and force yourself to eat it tomorrow for lunch--it just lies there calling your name.

A radio play from the old days spun the apocryphal story of a little Cuban lady who lost her son in the Communist rise to power and she signs on to kill Fidel Castro by "poisoning" him with her mouth watering highly caloric/cholesterolic cooking. I've kidded my wife that the habits of her 50s up bringing is slowly expanding my waist line to it's heart attack limit, but how can you berate a woman who slaves all day in the kitchen to please your palate and harden your arteries?

( My great cook applied to work at a cooking implement store nearby and a snooty HR type asked her to fill out an application that included the question, "Give some evidence that you know your way around the kitchen." My wife jokingly wrote, "When we were first married 30 years ago my husband had a 36 inch waist--it's balooned up to 52 inches and growing." The snooty applications clerk found nothing funny in that but the rest of the store heard about and laughed and laughed.

"So tell me Doctor," how do I get my wife to change habits of a life time and feed me salads for dinner and tiny meals mascarading as samples and tastes?" Old habits die hard and part of me, the part that flops over my belt never wants her to stop! Help! I'm drowning in a sea of tasty gravey, stuffing and all the turkey I can eat!

(I read this post to my wife who nodded knowingly--and with an unbending resolve to keep loading me up. With a keen sense of skewer she reminded that tonight especially --with Turkey and all the trimming--I was haunting the kitchen, snitching out of the mashed potato bowl and getting finger fulls of the mouthwateringly delicious stuffing---and stuffed myself BEFORE my plate was served!)

Wavering character in the face of delicious temptation! (That may be inscribed on my tombstone as they lower my vastly overweight body into the ground in a coverted piano crate--because I wouldn't fit in a standard size even extra wide coffin! Pallbearers--hope---six fork lifts! Never mind my ample demise! When it smells good and looks great--I'm tuckin' in-- Stay tuned. There are no easy fixes.

JRH

Mitt puts Energy and Jobs up Front with Rifkin for his Energy Secretary!

2011-10-10T11:41:00.001-07:00

First Romney Appointment
Rifkin to Energy Secretary

November 6, 2011: Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney raised the stakes in the Presidential race today by naming the first member of his cabinet exactly one year before the 2112 elections.

"Jeremy Rifkin, energy consultant and author of the book, The Third Industrial Revolution: Toward a New Economic Paradigm (excerpt) has agreed to serve as Energy Secretary in the first Romney administration." the Republican candidate for president announced from his national campaign headquarters in New Hampshire.

"In making this announcement," Romney continued, "Jeremy and I hope to move the presidential debate away from lesser things toward the most important issue facing our country in the next four years:. Energy powers our homes and businesses. Developing it in the way that Rifkin planned systems are already doing all over Europe and.just beginning in Vermont, Florida and Hawaii is improving lives and the economy, Most important it's creating great, high tech jobs."

Rifkin responded that he welcomed the challenge to be the Romney point man on Energy in the coming months of the campaign and the first. Rimney administration.

:In every major transition in the history of this country, practical visionaries have led the way: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs guided the market place toward products and processes that changed and continue changing our lives. I believe Mitt Romney is that man! His background and his intellect are well suited to champion the cause for a new change in the way we generate and pay for green energy from the forces that exist in abudance all around us. I am honored to assist him in that vital effort."

Before publishing his landmark book on developing two way energy at home and at work--then distributing it through a energy sharing network like the Internet throughout the country and around the world, Rifkin engineered energy development and storage systems in cooperative systems in currently, more than 50 European countries. He and his partners are already doing it!

As he concluded the news conference, Romney challenged his fellow Republicans and President Obama to make the issues the primary focus of the next year of campaigning by taking the initiative as he did today.

"When the American voters know more about the members of the teams we propose and the programs we will put in place when one of us hits the ground running in January of 2013, they can make a more informed choice.": Romney concluded. "Jeremy Rifkin is a man of proven new concepts that are already producing energy and jobs overseas. He wants to work with us here to do the same thing for America." I want to be your President to help him do that."

"The race for the presidency should be more than a beauty contest,. Today, I take a bold step to raise the rhetoric of this campaign towards more substance--toward proven ideas that will help us rise to our stature as the number one economy in the world, again.

"Ronald Reagan helped us raise our sights with a campaign that convinced us that it was Morning in America. I tell you, the sun rises every day--and when we're ready, when we are prepared, when we make the plans to do what is already working in other countries -- we will greet our next tomorrows with a new Amcerican Destiny--powered by green, affordable energy and jobs for every man and woman who can qualify to help get us there!"

DISCLAIMER: Of course this is fabricated from the whole cloth of the current presidential race--but suppose......?

For more information listen to a pod cast of an interview with Jeremy Rifkin by Diane Reihm, NPR from her broadcast this morning, LINK: http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=14982

What if I have other plans?

2011-09-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

Spare us the Autopilot!

At our house, Customer Service is the name of the Game!

Ever since our Jeff was old enough to carry a nickel in his little jeans, I've stepped back at the counter and let him deal with the sales clerk. Both he and his sister didn't want to talk directly to an adult at that tender age--but I gambled that the desire for the little toy or treat was strong enough to motivate them to ask for what they wanted. Eventually they got used to it and learned how to talk to adults it as they grew older. I believe that this single skill developed in ones so young turned them into great customer service practitioners by the time they were old enough to go to work in the world..

Dads can be a little mean sometimes to train up a child in the way he should grow--and when he is old he shall not depart from it.

Grampas often use a more kindly approach, but the means and the end are the same.

A Half-a-Wal tonight I needed help finding a gift we've been planning for our Sally's birthday dinner tomorrow night. A bright young clerk said she'd go with me to help locate it. What a luxury, to get that high quality of help. It's standard Walmart training. I love to visit with folks at stores and see where their commitment to great customer service comes from.

This is a good place to repeat the little story about, Bessie, the Atlanta Tea Room Great Gramma Waitress who summarized her reason for giving great Customer Service with the tender phrase: "Cuz I loves my peoples!" When I worked at Mrs. Field's Cookie Company we traveled a bit to produce media at new stores to communicate within the company about the latest and greatest store designs.

On one week long swing with the VP of Marketing and my direct Boss, the Senior Director of Training, we fell into a pattern of asking servers, bell boys, desk clerks and airline personel why they gave great customer service. Bessie, in Atlanta gave the best answer I heard out of dozens of responses. (We had planned to make a sequal to the training film, "Why do you give Great Customer Service?" but my involvement in that long term project ended when I prematurely terminated my services with the company to go onto other things)

I've honed a sensitivity to great Customer Service ever since and I've picked up on a thing or two about begruding contributions from folks who would really rather phone in their weak brand of commitment to the job as greeter, cashier or grocery cart wrangler.

One little fire plug of a lady has grown accustomed to my teasing at our nearby store, She sees me coming and starts her own brand of playful banter before I even arrive within the 20 foot perimeter. Like so many minimum wage greeters, she has developed an "automatic pilot" tone to her entrance greeting ("Welcome to Walmart") and her exit line, ("Have a good day!")

I tried something new with her tonight. I got her attention with my own well thought out response, "What if I have other plans?" It did catch her by surprise and she gulped air with wide eyes-- but nothing came. Finally she gasped, "Well, you want to ruin your day!" and I gave her two imaginary points for thinking on her feet--something she doesn't do very often.

Earlier as we paid our bill, we got the thoughtless "Good Day Kiss Off a quick thinking casher came back with, "You can't have other plans! For at least the next 30 seconds when you are out of my jurisdiction, I order you to REALLY have a good day!"

In the film the "Minority Report" (spoiler alert) Tom Cruise acting in the future has two eye transplants so he won't be recognized by the cornea reading automotons in high security areas and classy department stores. As we walks through a store the robot voice greets him with the identity of the former owner of his two new eyes and he gets a good idea where the transplated eyeballs came from, "Good afternoon, Mr. Yamaguchi! Welcome to Saks Fifth Avenue."

My point is simple. Even though robots do the greeting donky labor in the future (if you buy into the film) we have quite a bit of robotic imitation, thoughtless greetings and good byes that could be so much better with a little thought.

If more customer service employees "loved their peoples" the results for wishing every individual, every valuable company asset a sincere, connected greeting would make everyone involved feel so much better about themselves and the store.

When Minne Pearl ended her show with the words, "Y'all come back now, y'hear! it rises above the cultural boiler plate that we get out of rote habit in our daily business from low paid, unimaginative sales helpers.

I went to an autoparts store with my now 30 something son and heard him smoothly greet the guy behind the counter by the first name printed on his shirt. "Sam, I need your help." he said.

Think of how that woke old Sam up. "Gee," he might have said in his head. " I don't know who this customer is, but he obviously knows me"--forgetting that this was a simple 'trick' perpetrated by a saavy customer.

The next words out of his mouth would likely be, "Well, hello! Welcome back. What can I do to help?" (and he would try to mean it!"

Tricks? Techniques--yes, infused with meaning and made to sound sincere. It's the "change up" game we all should play better.

Some play it better than others...and for the most part, they win with bigger sales, better commissions and a greater likelihood of promotion to management--where every right thinking person wants to be!

Roll on GGP* (Washington, D.C.'s renown Senate Chaplain, the Rev. Peter Marshall, in the 40s and 50s, loved to play any kind of board game with his family. GGP are his initials for "Great Game Player.")

This "Have a Nice Day" on automatic pilot needs some pumping up. Please, America, get out of the rut and change up the greeting. Remember the difference between a rut and the grave are only dimensions.

Of course, I may have other plans!

JRH

Wit Wins the Girl - Creative Dating Techniques

2011-09-25T11:09:00.001-07:00

In Utah high schools the highly skilled art of asking a young lady on a date (or vice versa on Sadie Hawkins day) is legendary.

The "What's shakin'-wanna-go-out" technique has been replaced here with a rennaisance of creative ASKING.

Our Jeff was invited to an informal PROM - HOP - STOMP-TURNABOUT by a lovely gal in his class who dumped his invitation on our lawn in the wee hours of the morning. It was sealed in a beautiful waterproof envelope and frozen in the middle of a giant 3 foot long block of ice.

We had a lot of fun thawing the ice, speculating through the nearly half an hour who had sent some fun our way as a family.

An ambitious mother up the street goaded her son, John to asking his friend Susie to a school dance with a recommended clever invitation. John went to the dance after sending a complex algorhythm by e-mail to Linda, a girl he liked in his advanced math class. She responded with an even more complex series of three formulas that spelled out her YES after John worked through each one. The rest of the story is that John and Linda went steady after that and are planning a June wedding at Harvard in Cambridge Mass. where they are both doing doctoral work on scholarship.

My good friend, sixteen year old Michael and I do the music for a nearby retirement community every Sunday Morning. On the way to our joyous assignment, Michael told me that he was hammered from staying up so late the night before.

"What were you up to?" I asked.

"A friend and I were arranging the Titan fight song for string quartet." he smiled. Michael and his xis brothers have a pretty good string quartet of their own and are in demand on the church and old folks retirement home circuit. "It's for Homecoming next week."

Something called up my creative dating stories and Michael shyly revealed that his fellow musician was a girl.

"So, brother, " I joshed." "was this part of a creative date request?"

"Well, we have to go to the dance to see how our arrangement turned out!" he chuckled. Might was well go together, don't you think?"

Michael comes from a great Scoutmaster in Ron and a world class gardener and Cub Committee Chair in Melissa. His oldest brother, Peter is in Law School back east. Eric is pre-med at BYU, Nathan is on an LDS Mission to Seattle, Washington. Ryan is an active scout and the redheaded caboose, Brett plays the Cello not unlike Pablo Casals. What a great family--doing it just right, in my opinion.

Proving once again that Wit will Win when Wishy Washy Wishing Won't!

JRH

The Narrowing Funnel of Growing Old--The Endurance Crawl

2011-09-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

During the Depression years (1930s)
these were sarcastically called
Hoover Flags!

Even sideways, a funnel still gets narrow--the key is slenderizing your life style, gramps, and crawl through it to, "the other side!"

SLENDERIZE YOUR BUDGET: If I told you that I get little more than $1,000 per month in Social Security and my sweet Gramma Rosie gets less than $500 you'd likely scratch your head and try and figure out how we can almost survive month to month. We dip into our savings for a few basics. Our monthly budget last month was more than $2,000.

We still rent after nearly 40 years of married life and our savings are dwindling. I was forced into retirement when the Real Estate Coaching company where I worked went under in 2008. For the last three years, I've scattered resumes into the air--and had the scant two interviews and still nothing. Unemployment is long gone after more than three years. Old guys and gals just seem a little slower and less "bullet proof" than the young bucks who seem to know so much more than you. It's said that we compare our worst selves to others' best offerings. Employers may give lip service to experience and line up firmly against discrimination against age, but spot a whisp of grey hair and a little more chicken fat at the belt line and one word pops to a bosses mind: "NEXT!"

The poor souls who work because they have to as greeters at Walmart and table cleaners at McDonalds do their best to appear noble about it--but everybody knows: They gotta. I guess when our larder has only cat food, I may consider subjecting myself to the pity of my peers.

SELL THE CAR: Much as we value our independence and the flexibility to rush wherever we want to at a moments notice on Monday, I'm putting an ad in the paper. We owe about $1,200 on our little Kia sedan with the squinching punishing back doors courtesy of the Korean manufacturer who still thinks they're fighting a police action against anybody who has to ride back there! Our son has kept it in great shape and with a few touch ups, it will look like new. Selling the car, paying it off and depending on public transportation would save us nearly $400 in car payment and insurance costs. Based on what I need to pay for medicaid and medicare and supplemental insurance when I turn 65 in December, selling the car will almost make it affordable .

Car sales reminds me of an ironic ad on a bulletin board at a small college that read: For Sale to Faculty First: 19 something Buick--only ten years old for ($o much) and then as an after thought "Would make an excellent student second car!"

Consider these other benefits for seniors contemplating the tightening noose:

THE JOY OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Taking the bus or Trax is reasonable, especially on a monthly seniors pass. Planning around public transportation promotes physical fitness as you walk everywhere, at least between your front door and public transportation a block away. Planning on taking the bus engenders patience. And you meet so many nice people riding public. There's even a hint of intrepid adventure anticipating the frosty Utah winters, snow drifts, fall promoting ice and wind that leaves you with a much more basic complexion.

Grocery shopping would need to be more frequent, demanding trips for smaller loads of groceries more often.

SIMPLIFIED DIET: When the nice fresh veggies run out in the garden, the time has come to stock up on cat food, a wonderful affordable substitute for people food (so I hear from documentaries of starving seniors in the eastern seaboard). Healthy cats endorse it, because after all, in the same way cats are people too, old people can become cats if they work at it, especially for the inexpensive diet. Just remember, lots of water.

THE RETURN OF THE EMPLOYEE ATTITUDE: I've had to learn to willingly give up a percentage of my Social Security Check to the Veteran's administration in exchange for quite competent medical care. I have no choice for what comes next. As a kind of heavy handed gift for my glowing 65th birthday, I will incur about $150 each for Medicare, Medicaid and the dreaded Supplemental Insurance. (Good thing I will have sold the car by then so I can just about afford it.) I've worked for the Federal Government before when I took a job in then Senator Gale W. McGee's (D-WYO) Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee. I earned $6,000 a year to go to school at American University, then my draft number came up and I transferred my federal service to the U.S.Army as a Chaplain's Assistant at Fort Ord at the end of the Viet Nam conflict.

I really look forward to working for the feds again--exchanging my Social Security check for medical care with enough left over to survive on the economy (almost)

RELOCATION: During our near forty years together we've enjoyed the blessing of government food stamps occasionally, church welfare kept us alive until we could figure out how to support ourselves a little better. Now in the twilight of our years as even the most basic cat food goes up and up and our rent steadily increases. The utilities gently raise the costs of lights, heat, and water. We look forward to that great social experiment called the homeless shelter. With the increasing medical costs, ever growing utilities and no car, one day, I anticipate the freedom from rent--and liberation from the chains of junk that plague every senior (like Marley's ghost in Scrooge's Christmas Carol). If my health permits, I plan to be the only homeless person with a lap top and a good relationship with a computer store where I can access my beloved blogs.

When my folks moved from Cheyenne to Worland, my brave Brother Tom and his wife volunteered to help out by clearing the basement at the Cheyenne house. Over the months it took to sift and chuck, Tom and Trudy would ship us little keepsakes in what they affectionately called the intermittent BOX 'O JUNK. I wouldn't force our beloved Landlord and Lady Chris and Ellen to wade through our aggregate belongings--so until the "end" comes that's my last real job.

With this post I am proud to say I think I have found the ultimate solution for old age: Poverty, Homelessness and an uninspired feline diet. I never saved a nickle against retirement. I have joyously cheered the onslaught of time coping with the little slings and arrows of diabetes, slowly resolving debt and a low credit rating.

THE LAST MEMORIAL: Lately we've had reasonably cheerful discussions of funeral arrangements. We looked into the sevem thousand dollar bill for a fancy schmanzy funeral at one of the best funeral "homes" We decided we could spend that money more effectively keeping our cat food supply topped off. Laws prohibit my dream: a plain pine box in the backyard--likely because I can't afford the lumber or the time to build it and my backyard is owned by another. But I have one ace in the hole. When you die you gotta be buried, if not for love then for stink as my dear friend Elaine Woodward chuckled to me one day.

Yes the narrowing funnel of growing old gets narrower and narrower for those of us on the bottom of the food chain. To get through to the other side involves enduring to the end---or just giving into disease and circumstances and jumping the broom to the other side.

WHAT'S AFTER DEATH? National Public Radio interviewed a former attorney who gave up his practice and lived in a walk up efficiency in New York and went out for chinese food a lot. This man was a compulsive runner who spent much of his waking life jogging around a track that he championed around the old reservoir. He gave much of his own fortune and contacted a wide circle of friends for the rest to build it.

The reporter asked the near 90 year old guy if he had any idea what death was like. He said it was. "Like transferring from one apartment to another." To men and women of such peaceful attitude death comes as a blessing. For many their kids ignore them. They haven't taken time to cultivate neighbors. Their best friend is their barcolounger and the flickering image, hour by hour on what passes for their real life--the plug in drug.

(The media makes much of fuzz and wuz as Dan Rather used to say. News of flashing red lights and dead bodies spur TV ratings--when so many other things cry out for coverage) News of death is like the grass in Jesus' parables--it comes and goes without much lasting impact that we can see.

Gramma Rosie knows I want a DNR (Do not resuscitate) order if and when I go to the hospital for the last time. It's the getting from here to there than needs resuscitation. No transplants, no surgery--well maybe a little pain medication! As someone famous once said, "I'd love to live in the dark ages.....with penicillin!'

With the fall of the stock market and devastation of senior investments for a comfortable retirement, more and more seniors are forced to crawl through the narrow end of the funnel. Physical and mental challenges make the journey as challenging as any mountain climbing. I figure I'm among friends, though I've never met most of them.

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR A POLITICAL SOLUTION: I won't wait for a resurgence of the Grey Panthers to find a political solution. With the Tea Party wealthy dictating a freeze on all government spending--even to keep the government itself in business, I'm not going to depend on Social Security to get a boost and swoop in as if on a white horse and save us.

Nope, I'm gonna sell the car, shop for a nearby homeless shelter, arrange our cat food by variety of flavor--and hunker down for the end I'm enduring towards. When the young clerks at the stores we go to less and less frequently bid me to "have a nice day," I smile and ask "Suppose I have other plans?" Happy endurance crawling! See you over there!

JRH

Boy Chases Girl 'til She Catches Him!

2011-09-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

If she likes him,
she'll fake a stumble!

There are lots of practical things a grampa can teach a gramson (and a gramdaughter) that parents some time miss. The facts of life are often some of those things.

My own great dad was pretty sparce when it came to "the talk" We were sitting on aluminum lawn furniture out on the edge of Laramie at 1408 Ashley, looking east at sundown one evening--just him and me. It was a Saturday. I had a date later. I was a man of the world. I'd been to Brazil. I'd dated a few girls and I'd paid good attention in the locker room where this kind of informal "training" goes on and I was prepared.

It was 1969 and times were different. AIDS had not been imagined. VD was only talked about in the seedier parts of our tiny downtown--and then only by what were then called, "Beatniks" (anybody with a beard and sandals or long hair and a turtle neck--you get the idea.) Most had done academic time in Berkley and had wild ideas and wilder mating habits.

I was the clean cut son of a railroad engineer--and I'd always tried to be a good boy.

"Now, son," he began, "When the time comes, make sure that you've got clean sheets on your bed."

Practical advice, nothing flashy--no great revelation. Solid wisdom from a man who didn't say much--even to his near and dear. He knew that the church his family were very active members of, taught the youth and adults to be totally celibate before marriage and totally faithful after marriage. I was and he knew it.

The reason this all came up today was we got cable this week and on the Starz network I saw a wonderful romatic comedy called "How Do You Know?" with Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon and Jack Nicholson. Though it didn't do well at the box office the writing is phenomenol (maybe that's why!). Witherspoon plays a superb female softball player on the down hill of her Olympic career who gets cut from the team and changes her whole way of life.

Wilson is a 14 million dollar big league pitcher with a 95 mile fast ball. He is self absorbed and trying hard to be the perfect host to the many women he sleeps with. Reese is getting ready to leave his palacial apartment when he says, "You don't have to wear that dress, here, try one of these!" He opens a big cupboard that looks like the hoody collection at Nordstroms--and they're all in pink!

"This is wrong, it just feels wrong!" she says, " I feel like I'm on an assembly line!"

Wilson responds, "Well, that's kinda how it works. You sleep with a bunch of women choose one to get monogomous with for the rest of your life--that IS sort of an assembly line."

Earlier in the movie he reassures her with, "lady athletes always give good sex"

"Couldn't you personalize it a little?" she asks.

I loved the movie, even though the Nick and Nora/Cary Grant and Roslind Russell banter is a bit pretentious and self conscious. It's like a Shakespeare farce that would work just as well on radio--but came off wooden to the teen and twenty somethings who never saw the great old movies.

Without "spoiling" the ending she has to choose between two men as the plot thickens. Her final choice is based on how the "Right" guy treats her without pretention,

Hence the title above. The boys chase this girl, as they do every girl, and in the end, she makes the choice. And that's the bit of advice I would pass along to a grandson, if I ever get one, and when he's old enough to "get it!" Those kinds of little bits of relationship understanding are great material for a grampa to pass on.

Finally, I met a smashing girl at one of the electronic stores. She had a smile like Nora O'Donnel of CNBC and big eyes to match. Her real name is not Annie, but that's the one I'll use in this story. I bought a little smart phone stand to attach to the vent in the Kia. Annie is a natural flirt--great hair, really good customer service and had learned to call me by name. I admit it, I fell in love (in the way that a caring dad falls in love with an excellent find for his single 30 something son) Upshot: She let me take her picture to "test" the phone and she gave me her e-mail so I could send her an example of how much Nora O'Donnel she looked like--the high tech geriatric equivalent of my son getting a cute girl's phone number (and he does that a lot).

Here's the lesson- I casually showed him her picture and encouraged him to go down and do a little cell phone shopping at her counter, suggesting that she had a technical background and a great manner--and not bad looking either! (A perfect daughter in law).

My wonderful self absorbed bone-headed son got a touch of arrogance in his manner when he responded, "Well, if Annie thinks she knows tech, I can run rings around her!" ....and I hung my head in defeat for a couple of beats! He didn't get the lesson. I reminded him gently that the purpose of courting was to be attracted to someone who would make a great partner, a fine companion -- a good match, and he'd lost it in the bullpen with an arrogance that denied all the potential she could bring to a partnership, and played up his superiority -- to the boredom of all concerned.

There's a little commercial running on network TV with two guys and a waitress. I've long since forgotten the product, but I got the message that my son does not yet understand. The nerdier of the two asks for the waitress to repeat the specials again--and as she begins to look exasperated the noble buddy interrupts her and tells his friend what they are as the camera cuts away to the waitress who looks with growing admiration at a man who obviously listens.

Self absorbed young men don't get to first base. Caring, accomplished, secure, honest listeners who, like Judge Learned Hand love for others to participate in the conversation-- these get to second, sometimes third and more often than all others,score at Home Base.

By the way, Judge Hand was an apellate judge in Washington D.C. in the forties and fifties. Hostesses were always careful to invite him to parties and he would show up armed with his mental list. He had devised half a dozen provocative questions that he would drop like pearls into every coversation. Then, and most importantly, he would actively listen and ask related follow up questions to prove it.

The secret to this message is girls fall for men who are secure enough to follow Judge Hand's excellent example. Instead, most are so insecure they have to dominate conversations with a variety of versions of their own story. "How Do You Know" is a movie that at it's best illustrates the dilemma of communication that plagues modern couples--and demonstrates how, and how not to resolve the conflicts that arise!

This isn't the end by a long stretch, but it's a start on "the talk" Did it help? Can you feel me listening?

JRH

Was that OK Customer Service? Not even CLOSE!

2011-08-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

Cheery, Bright, Exciting, Caring: None of the Above

National Shopko Sales Training Management:

To Whom It May Concern:

We just bought eight bottles of laundry soap at your Midvale, Utah store. At $2.99 a 72 ounce bottle compared to the same size bottle of Tide at $14.00 it was a fine value, but we almost walked away because of the way we were treated.

I write my reactions to the way the cashier and the shift manager treated us. No, they didn't abuse us, but after years my wife and I have worked in retail customer service, I'm hoping that this report to you on the reaction of Jenna and Chris under pressure, will give you a little ammunition for your next sales training.

We rarely come to Shopko--and by the empty parking lot, neither do many, many others.

We came from the ad--in fact the price on the laundry soap was so good, that we bit this loss leader and bought $125 worth of things we liked that were also well priced.

Then we got to the check stand.

The laundry detergent rung in at $6.99 a bottle (the before the sale price) Jenna, the otherwise nice check stand woman said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Your coupon doesn't take effect until tomorrow!"

Standing firmly and using an even voice I announced, "No, $2.99 was the price on the display and that's the one we'll have, thanks! Jenna looked at me like I had flame coming out both nostrils. She feigned a certain politeness, but she started our "confrontation" blaming the computer. I stood my ground.

Finally, Jenna said she'd call somebody. This took several minutes. To her credit she kept ringing up the other items when the phone at her station rang in. Finally Chris, the shift supervisor showed up and the tension he brought with him was palpable. There was no reassurance of either clerk or customer. He ran the detergent. When it came up $6.99 he "fixed it" by scanning the bottles again and re-keying in each one of our eight bottles by hand and walking away after he repeated that the sale on the mailed out flyer was supposed to start tomorrow.

Again, we got no reassurance, no apologies for their lack of preparation or antiquated computer programming. No smiles. Like inmates in a concentration camp, we were made to feel guilty for standing up for ourselves and our rights.

Enough of the "IF ONLIES"

Now for the "NEXT TIMES"

1. Reprogram the Computer nationwide to shorten the time re-pricing takes. Yes, I pay hard earned money for what I buy--but klunky sales procedures that waste my time in line costs my time--which is valuable, at least to me and the people behind us waiting in line wondering what the big bruhaha is.

2. Prepare for the Sale a day or two early if the mailer hits before the date! In the meantime, coordinate the price at the point of purchase and the computer. Checklists are needed here!

3. She who lives by the Computer will die by the Computer. Everybody is lazy. If the customer will roll over to the computer--you can go on with your life as a sales clerk without involving your manager or pushing all those pesky buttons!

4. Don't treat me like the problem! The frowns from Chis especially and his caustic comment that made me feel guilty for being THE PROBLEM was not my fault. I did my part. I came in on the ad, bought a years supply of laundry detergent and picked up an additional $125 dollars of other stuff. DON'T YOU DARE TREAT ME LIKE THE PROBLEM!

5. Treat me as a great reason for a solution! Lazy Sales folks are used to blaming the computer, and avoiding the extra steps that clog up the line. We play a little game, Here's the do over lines I would write for Jenna: "Don't worry about the price on the computer. I can fix that for you." I could boycott Shopco forever for her minor rudeness, but I would promise myself to come back if I knew with just that comment in yellow that Jenna (and others on the staff) were pulling for me. Even if she CAN'T fix it, it doesn't cost anything to say those words! It makes me feel better.

6. Management should confine negative energy to the back room. Chris, to his credit, asked if he could help me find something when I was wandering the store a few minutes earlier. All that goodwill disappeared when he scowled at me and blamed an early ad drop. I had to ask HIM if we got the sales price. He begrudingly told me I would, over his shoulder as he walked away. WRONG! If he had said something like, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Howe for the time it took to resolve that problem. Obviously we've got to get ready for the sale a little sooner!" That's all I want. A sales staff who knows the difference between easy smarmy friendly and real service when the chips are down. I'd be very suprised if Chris took the time to solve that problem before it happened again after we left.

The same Chinese konji character for "crisis" can also mean "opportunity". When the chips are down, the truly great increase genuine kindnesses. Even Richard Nixon, interviewing bureaucrats who galled him would offer another cup of coffee or presidential cufflinks. Nuf said!

Sincerely,

Mrs.and Mrs. Jon and Rosie Howe

Secret Shoppers in our Hearts

JRH

Not "Snooty" Enough!

2011-08-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of parenthood is to get a call like we did from our daughter today. She called to let us know that "they" were finally accepted to the Master's Program at the U--something they have both been working for. Sally won't actually be going to class--her job is academic support while Dani will be going to classes--as she did for her Bachelors at the University of Phoenix.

Her call reminded me of the line Eve Arden delivers, seemingly unknowing as a double entendere, acting as principal of Rydell High School in the musical film "Grease" During announcements over the school P.A. System she invites everyone to the football game that night with the words," Remember, if you can't be an athlete, at least you can be an athletic supporter!" (laughter)

Or the ever popular acceptance speech, "Thank you for your support! I shall wear it always!"

Sally's sparkling ethusiasm was contageous.

Her open-hearted love for Dani and her willingness to do anything to support Dani in her academic career with no thought of any return except the love they share is admirable. Her grandmother Delma did the same selfless service for her younger sister, working as Secretary to the Dean of Women at Utah State while Helen Marie earned her bachelors degree and found Zachary, her attorney, later bishop and judge husband and father of their nine children.


Snooty is the opposite of humility!

Though Sally took an associates degree in interior design, she was never "snooty" enough to fit in the craft. She opted instead for work in the medical field where she is universally loved for her caring manner and the zany sense of humor she says she inherited from me.

"Snooty" is a quality shared by interior designers, executive chefs with an attitude and attorneys who spend most of their time convincing you that you need them. Some call it pride, some arrogance, most call it annoying. Sally has none of that. Hooray!

As her caring father--with barely enough money at the time to pay the rent and buy a little food, I determined to spend a few hours every day calling around to find her an internship with a interior designer--any interior designer in town. After a week or two devoted to this effort, I discovered two things:

First - Interior Design houses had all the interns from the four year Universities that they could handle. Junior College students were way too far down on the snooty totem pole.

Second - Interior Design would never fit my precious girl. Woody Allen once said that he would never become a member of an organization that would accept him as a member.

Instead she opted for one of the helping professions--and works as a trusted assistant to a group of opthamologists at a local clinic.

Deep in her heart, Sally would rather be a veterinarian. Trouble is (and she knows this all too well) Sally would take every critter under her care home for the rest of it's natural life! Sally is 34. She will likely never go back to school--and critters all around will be the worse for it.

Intstead she concentrates on a couple of pug dogs. She lavishes love on all within her grasp. She's not snooty enough to do anything else.

Tough Meekness - The Powerful Blacksmith cuddling his Newborn!

2011-07-25T18:34:00.001-07:00

"I'll teach you to hit other kids!"

Fathers and grandfathers are expected to be tough enough to protect their families from all hazards foreign, domestic, economic and school yard.

Not being tough enough is a charge leveled against our current president.

This excellent communicator in public apparently has a difficult time making his rhetoric stick in the up close negotiations with the opposition. Reagan against the Russians with star wars technology was tough! LBJ with anybody unfortunate enough to be on the recieving end of his chain mail charm was real tough!

As long as we're talking politics, my nominee for tough is a former Senator from Maine and later Carter's Secretary of State--Edmund Muskie--the candidate who cried. As a legislator he knew few peers. Few know that much of the clean air legislation of the seventies came because this saavy legislator would smoke big black smelly cigars in the conference sessions where House and Senate versions of the same bill has hammered out.

Muskie's colleagues couldn't wait for an excuse to escape that smoke filled room to go out and kiss babies of tourist constituents, take a phone call or check with his office. While they were gone, Muskie would slip clean air language into the legislation--and by the time other members of the committee held their nose and returned--the deed was done. Each half of the congress passsed the conference report, the president signed it into law and Muskie kept at it, using that cigar and an iron bladder to full advantage.

I read someplace that Republican Presidents are elected to protect us, Democrats are elected to take care of us. The ying and yang of politics represents the traditional roles of each parent. Dads are there to protect. Moms are there to nurture.

Bringing it down to a family level, toughness, make that meekness is essential, especially in both parents and always in grampas!

Traditionally the concept of meekness is synonomous with weak, milquetoast, ineffectual. Most folks believe that when the Bible says the meek will inherit the earth, it's because they're too weak to claim it for themselves.

Consider this: a church leader (LDS President David O. McKay) visited the junk yard of a good friend and agreed to give up his cherished gold watch for an experiment. His friend measured the timepiece with a micrometer, set some instruments on a crusher machine and placed the precious watch underneath a heavy, heavy weight. When he let it fall, the crusher machine stopped mere milimeters above the watch.

The leader said, "That is meekness! Tremendous power under complete control. It's the image of a powerful Blacksmith cuddling his newborn babe.

We enjoy a British series on PBS entitled "Larkrise to Candleford". Last night the prosperous owner of the Hotel in Candleford discovers he has an illigitimate son--who by the time of the episode is about nine years old. The father arranges for his son to come to Candleford from the orphanage far away and then has a riding accident and lands in the hospital. His friends who run the post office take "Little Man" in and nurtures him til his father heals. This wealthy man cannot wait to "take control" of the boy --and while yet weak and recooperating he lacks the self control to hold off and demands the boy be brought to him. The father's lack of control colors the boy's life from then on--and he rebels against the well meaning, but demanding father.

Yakoff Schmirnoff, the Russian Comic once remarked that America was, "Such a country! Where else can you take your children to Walmart so you can yell at them!"

Parents who aren't clever enough to give their kids five dollars and challenge them to find the very best buy to keep them from whining, deserve what they get!

Meekness is such an essential characteristic of parent hood. My friends Chris and Ellen,the parents of our adopted gramkids are the most meek in the face of seven active, sometimes rebellious little guys. One night their number three, Cheetah Joe started building a tent with blankets on the furniture just as their Family Home Evening was about to start. He was excited only about the tent.

I watched his Dad gently invite him to join the rest of the family. Nuthin' doin'! So they started without him--and he kept building. Mom started teaching a scripture lesson and the tent kept rising. "C'mon Joe, please shut it down and join us." she said evenly. (At our house the gentle persuasion would have given away to a parental explosion and a confiscation of the blankets!)

My model parents were still gently inviting and Cheetah Joe was carrying on as if they might forget about him---then came the next level--and from the Mom--Ellen, the enforcer! Gently but very firmly she escorted Cheetah Joe away from his blanket skyscraper and led him to a "time out stool" He went, cuz he saw the determined look in her eye. She went back to the lesson--- Wait for it---one beat, then two and a frustrated scream erupted from Joe on the stool! Though we were guests, Cheetah Joe didn't care. He's a good boy--just a little willfully focused sometimes.

Fatherhood (and Gramfatherhood) can be spoiled by a lack of self control, that hopefully Cheetah Joe will learn over the years before he graduates, marries and moves away.

One father that I know has suffered two divorces among his children -- and one son that I know well avoids his father because of the iron control he still exerts. He's an impressive church worker and excellent provider, but his grown children still quake and shudder because he still treats them like they're little kids. How sad!

I have a close relative who went through his own divorce recently because (in part) his wife didn't support him in his quest for more education. She craved what she called ME time, and he hid out at a nearby restaurant to study, rather than go home. When he did go home, he became more and more frustrated because she didn't cook and clean for him as his mother had! When the house forclosed which they foolishly tried to buy with a variable rate mortgage WHILE he was taking out hundreds of thousands in student loans that only he felt he HAD TO HAVE--they went their separate, somewhat selfish ways. Though they had a lot of fun trying, they produced no offspring, and wisely so---neither of them had finished fully developing their own self control. Gentle self control is an absolute necessity in a parent (or Grandparent)

Practice meekness, Grampa, and know that kids eventually grow up some--even if it takes til they reach retirement age.

See EQ: Delayed Gratification and the Marshmellow study in Time Magazine

JRH

Comfort Zone --Thy name is ELECTRONIC!

2011-07-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

More than forty years ago was we would go tracting door to door as young LDS missionaries, I noticed something unique about Wednesday nights. Lovely people who would otherwise have let us in on another night, answered our "claps" at the door and quickly asked us to come back another night. We learned to do something else on Wednesdays because of the NOVELLAS.

I'm related to a few folks who are glued to the tube on Tuesday nights for NCIS, NCIS-LA and the Good Wife on CBS and several British Comedies on Saturday from 7-10. I have threated to have a Whitman style sampler embroidered with the words, "Real Life IS an Acceptable Substitute for Television" but at my house I couldn't buy a convert to that idea for any amount

Some folks at my house are closer emotionally to several PBS chefs and a couple of CBS adventure stars than they are to perfectly acceptable negibors and most of our friends from before this electronic addiction.

Getting my near and dear to church or a neighborhood function is impossible--but I mis-state myself. After six weeks of organizing a very successful Talent Show and Craft Display, I came home to my loving embroidery-mad spouse who puffed out her lip in a mock pout and asked, "Could I have displayed my hand embroidered dish towels over there last night?"

"Yes," I said sheepishly, "but you haven't come over there for so long that I just assumed you wouldn't be able to participate."

"Well," she rationalized, "the band would have been too loud any way--and you know my allergy to organ pipe vibrations.   Wouldn't have worked anyway.--cuz I've been nursing a migraine. Pulling my sweet spouse away from her plug in drug, her DVDs and her flashing light friends in the box of transisters and wires that has become her home away from home to mingle with genuine flesh and blood friends is more and more difficult.

Strangely she jumps to the chance to shop amid strangers at the local half a Wal (as we call our downsized Wallmart) But spending time with folks outside the family circle, away from her remote controls is less and less likely.

I belong to a church that has wonderful core principles--but with changes on earth come change ups among the faithful.   Older folks who cling to their pew in church in spite of all changes are legion.   A friend told me of one fellow who took a dislike to one of the counselors in local leadership and insisted on pulling the lobby couch into the overflow area at the back of the chapel and during reverent meetings, when the despised counselor spoke --the rebel unfolded a copy of the opposition newspaper and noisely turned the pages until that talk was done.

Maybe boycott, however justified by headaches, aching knees and gimpy tummies is better than a couch rebellion by somebody who won't go away.

About going away, I must share the story I heard a few weeks ago from the Chief Operating Office of the Salt Lake Temple, Lonnie _________. He told a group of older men about a drunk who wandered into Temple Square in Salt Lake City to the great front steps of that magnificent structure just below a majestic statue of the Angel Moroni blowing a long golden trumpet. (If you've ever attended a wedding at the LDS temple, you know the custom of brides and their wedding parties climbing the steps in one of six door ways and posing for pictures as they start their wedded life together.

The drunk started coming in around 3 in the afternoon carrying an open whiskey bottle that he had emptied about half way. His tirade included shaking his fist at the angel and cursing out loud in the angel Moroni's name.    In such instances the staff had been instructed to call the police, and every day for several days the police did their duty. Unable to charge him with anything other than exercizing his first amendment rights, He was free after each arraignment to return the next day and continue the harrangue.

The Temple leadership didn't know what else to do.   Then one day after a week or two of this display a temple engineer was working on the roof, below the angel, down on his hands and knees behind some granite faced trim when the tirade began again.   Suddenly, without revealing himself, the engineer in a deep and rather loud voice said, "STOP THAT!. You should be ashamed of yourself. Go away and never come back!"

The drunk's ability to distinguish between the giant angle sculpture and the voice coming from slightly below it was, to say the least, somewhat blurred--but the booming announcement had it's desired effect. The man gently rested his empty bottle by the side of the temple wall, turned his wobbling steps out of temple square, never to be seen again.

Climbing out of a comfort zone is difficult at best, the older we grow. As the leader of a Sunday School, I once tried a new technique to consolidate the Sunday School class in a chapel setting near the front. (It's tough to teach a crowd that has two or three rows between each other--it lacks togetherness) I masking taped some festive pastel yarn to block off the last several rows of the hall and sat in the back to see what happened. One very elderly gentleman came in with his ailing wife, saw the yarn and unceremoniously pulled it down and sat in the same seat he had occupied for what seemed like forever.

After the meeting with as much tact as I could muster I kidded with him a little. As seriously as he could muster he informed him that he had bought and paid for that pew and he would have to be carried out dead from it before he'd ever sit anywhere else. (I'd read that early protestant churches had auctioned off pews as a fund raising mechanism--but not in the Mormon faith--and not in Utah.)

After asking around and some rudimentary research, I discovered that he had been the secretary of the building committee that had planned and built our building. He was the one who paid all the bills, and likely chipped in a few more bucks than most to make sure the work was paid for before it was dedicated.   He had "bought" that pew--and I never bothered him about it again.

Enjoy your comfort zone and remember that the only difference between a rut an a grave are the dimensions!

JRH.

Grampa Encourages Structure!

2011-05-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

A shock to see a young friend in chains

Gramma Pixie and I were invited to give a show of support for a young man in jail we barely knew. Our daughters are friends of his, his little brother and their single mom. They have joined us for several Howe family holiday dinners when the three of them shared a house for a while with our daughters. It was an arraignment--a brief appearance before a judge. We were two of a double row of friends and family who turned out to impress the judge on the young man's behalf.

I couldn't help notice a gleam of gratitude in his eye when he shuffled in cuffed and shackled in his green county jail jumpsuit. He was formally charged with felony burglary and theft. In his good hearted way, he was taken advantage of by some pint sized thieves--and because he was he only one with a driver's license he represented them at the pawnbrokers to sell a few DVDs the younger one had taken from a house where he had had been evicted. Our young friend was trying to be kind--and it blew up in his face. The bail was set at $100,000.

I kept thinking that our "support" was too little too late. Somewhere back in history, before he was concieved, someone should have been there for him--giving him structure and a little tough love on a regular basis. Like so many after-thought children, his own father never married the mother. His grandfather had long since divorced the grandmother and moved out of state. Me? I can count on one hand the times we rubbed shoulders. The young man grew up virtually fatherless. In fairness, his mother tried--but she was often unemployed--and vowed to keep religion away from her sons. (He has a little brother who was recently caught shop lifting for food) Well meaning relatives have offered to help some, but it becomes too much and the offer is generally withdrawn.

What could have been done early on? What more can I do?

1. The mother could have gotten and stayed married. A loving Dad and Mom and a steady home life with dinner on the table and open communication could have helped.

2. Membership in a good church with an excellent youth program could have helped. I know families from many different faith groups--and it's no secret that we try to be active Mormons, but baptism, keeping covenants to do better, a good understanding of repentance could have made a difference. LDS Young men grow into callings in the priesthood, accept responsiblity and work with youth leaders and a good bishop who monitor progress and give consistent encouragement.

3. Cub Scouts, Hockey--these filled in the gap somewhat -- but a consistent, life long program is what's needed. Family relationships, consistent presence and a flow of love and encouragement-- That's what Grampa's can help do.

We go to court for the trial early next month. We'll be there for support, hoping for a good outcome. Suprizingly this good-hearted young man told one of our daughters that he believed this happened at a good time in his life---that it was a wake up call to help teach him how to be more careful in choosing his friends--and finish his education.

He can't go back and do most of his young life over. He can only start where he stands and move forward. If this is a needed wake up call--and he can get probation with a warning---that would be good. Stay tuned. JRH

Link: Time in Jail with Grampa

Consequences: Time in Jail with Grampa

2010-09-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

Anticipating

One summer morning, I remember that my dad (Grampa Milo) took me down to the Albany County Jail in Laramie on Grand Avenue when I was about 9 and could understand.

It started as an interesting field trip--and ended in a life lesson I have never forgotten.

We toured the jail (located on the top floor of the county building with big windows allowing folks from the street to see who was in the cells) and ended up outside solitary confinement.

I remember to this day the silver painted crude 3/8ths inch steel door with a three inch hole and a sliding cover. Gently, Dad invited me to step inside. It was clean but completely black. With the permission of the Sheriff, he slowly closed the door and threw the bolt lock--and through the hole in the door he quietly said, "I want you to know that if you ever get picked up and taken to jail, I will visit you. I will pray with you, but I won't bail you out."

I wasn't in trouble. I wasn't upset and I don't remember being scared. It was a mind sticking adventure. In the following fifty plus years, that unique experience was unforgettable I found out later that a railroad friend of his had bailed his son out of jail again and again for petty theft, then little burglaries then bigger and bigger crimes. This visit to the jail for me was Dad's pretty effective effort to put a stop to any temptation to steal in my young life. So far, it's worked.

I've taken both my sons into a cell and sat with them when a little car suddenly went missing from a store shelf and showed up in a little pocket when we got home. It's been a "scared straight" lesson we've gently administered across the generations. A little kindly, tough love.