finding the tigger

I was peeved. I thought: “My species has gotten off our planet and is in a new world for the first time, and you people think bedtime matters?”

When I got home, my dad gave me a photo that he’d taken of our TV set the second Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. We still have that photo.

Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.

Ask for What You Want
On a trip to Disney World, my dad and I were at the monorail with my son Dylan, then 4. Dylan wanted to sit in the nose-cone with the driver, and my father thought it would be a kick too.

“Too bad they don’t let regular people sit there,” Dad said.

“Actually, I’ve learned there’s a trick to getting to sit up front,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”

I walked over to the attendant and said: “Excuse me. Could we please sit in the front car?”

“Certainly,” the attendant said. He led us to the nose-cone. It was one of the only times I ever saw my dad flabbergasted. “I said there was a trick,” I told him. “I didn’t say it was a hard trick.”

Now I’ve gotten even better at “just asking.” As we all know, it can take days to get medical results. Waiting is not how I want to spend my time, so I ask: “What’s the fastest I can get these results?”

“Oh,” they often respond, “we might be able to have them for you within an hour.”

Ask. More often than you’d suspect, the answer you’ll get is, “Sure.”

Dare To Take a Risk
In a virtual-reality course I taught, I encouraged students to attempt hard things and not worry about failing. At the end of the semester, I presented a stuffed penguin—“The First Penguin Award”—to the team that took the biggest gamble while not meeting its goals. The award came from the idea that when penguins jump in water that might have predators, well, one of them’s got to be the first penguin. In essence, it was a prize for “glorious failure.”

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. And it can be the most valuable thing you have to offer.

Look for the Best In Everybody
I got this advice from Jon Snoddy, my hero at Disney Imagineering. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.” When you’re frustrated with people, when you’re angry, it may be because you haven’t given them enough time. Jon warned that this took great patience, even years. “In the end,” he said, “people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”

Make Time for What Matters
When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. Since my boss demanded a way for people to reach me, I recorded this greeting:

“Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was 39 to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they lived. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their phone number. And then, if you can convince my in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.” We didn’t get any calls.

Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

Let Kids Be Themselves
Because I’ve been so vocal about my childhood dreams, people have asked me about the dreams I have for my own kids. As a professor, I’ve seen how disruptive it can be for parents to have specific dreams for their children. My job is to help my kids foster a joy for life and develop the tools to fulfill their own wishes. My wishes for them are very exact and, given that I won’t be there, I want to be clear: Kids, don’t try to figure out what I wanted you to become. I want you to become what you want to become. And I want you to feel as if I am there with you, whatever path you choose.

Adapted from the book The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow. Copyright © 2008 Randy Pausch. To be published by Hyperion. All rights reserved.

moko's deep blue give

When I was a child, I lived for those Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom specials. My little girl self was immersed in bliss and wonder as I traveled the far corners of the world, sneaking a peek at our world’s magnificent creatures without ever leaving my green shagged, lava-lamped room. I felt humbled at the opportunity to see such exotic beauty when all I had was a cow and a couple of chickens. For awhile, it was my greatest dream to hang from the trees, roam the Serengeti and swim the seas with Cousteau.

Last spring, I remember reading an amazing story that surfaced by way of New Zealand. It seems that for a few years now, Mahia Beach has had a bottle nosed citizen named Moko, who likes to buddy up and play in the surf with all the locals from time to time. Her antics and sense of fun have been a delight to the community and it was on a particular day last March when she showed her more serious side. A mother Pygmy and her calf, had become disoriented and beached themselves on a sandbar (hear that US Navy?) The rescue team had worked more than an hour trying to get them back on track but to no avail. Suddenly, Mahia’s gray torpedo got down to business, pushing herself past the workers and with porpoiseful meaning led mama and baby to the channel that took them safely back out to sea.


So this Maori beauty is my blog inspiration for the week. We humanoids can't take all the glory, can we? This altruistic move from one of our fellow mammal types was really something. Not surprising, but really something. Nature and its majesty, its innate goodness, continue to astound me and serve as a sort of natural anti-depressant just when I need it most. Down deep, beyond the blue, Moko and all her homies are a reflection of who we really are, life at its truest, fairest and most profound....not a lot of that gray matter interfering with things. Taking only what is needed and nothing more..the dynamics of brute strength and laser precision exceeded only by its quiet, unfathomable beauty and adaptable perfection (whether ya believe that last part or not)! Until every inhabitant on this amazing orb can understand that we are one and the same and that are very lives depend on this incredibly woven, rhythmic, mystical current, we are going to continue to say goodbye to these amazing creatures, one by one. And someday to ourselves if we're not careful. We got our condor back but we're starting to lose our polar bears. I love dogs and cats like everybody else but I wish people would look a little deeper into the chain and see that all the wild life that peppers our planet is indeed an integral, vital, necessary part of our life force, whether it comes when we call, or sleeps at the foot of our bed and we gotta protect her. I can't help but imagine what some of the 41 billion dollars a year (in this country alone) that is spent of on our pets could do to help the situation of some of our planet's species. It is these majestic, colorful, faraway lives that are the spokes in the wheel of our existence...the rain forest, our very breath.

Yep, we’re a team alright, no matter what covers our epidermis or hangs from our bark. And now the lunkheads wanna dig in the Arctic’s "vast nothingness". Last time I checked, caribou and foxes were something. All so we can drive an Escalade. Ugh. Sometimes I think we should all go Amish. It would simplify things for sure. Something about Geez with a long beard though, it just doesn't work for me. You know, each to his own, but this Mama has chosen to avoid zoos and anything barricaded when it comes to that magical introduction between children and their slippery, hairy, spiny counterparts. My dough’s gonna be spent on the boxed DVD set of Planet Earth or my Jane Goodall Animal Series books (thanks, Aunty T.)..& if I'm really fortunate, on a couple of good snorkels to strap across my munchkin's mugs while we soak it all up one day in my beloved Cook's Bay. I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer but it is just so profoundly sad to me that any creature spends its life behind bars...left to circle in a shallow pool. wasting its aerial majesty on some dude eating funnel cake who just spent 59 bucks on Jr. so he could get splashed, or is whipped to run a track so fast that their ankles break. I think we can do better than that. We owe Moko, ourselves, that much.

Click here for a moment of bliss!
...and here if you wanna bone up on the Arctic!

my plan for iraq

By BARACK OBAMA

Published: July 14, 2008
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor

CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

shake a leg

Our solar system has a dent in it and watermelon can help our guys in the sack. Who knew? All kinds of crazy things got thrown at me this week but all was well with Mama by Wednesday night at 7pm, Central Standard Time. A couple of years ago, I happened to channel surf on the Fox wave, which I usually try my best not to do, and happened on a show that I think just may be the best thing going on in the ole squawk box. So You Think You Can Dance has what American Idol doesn’t have..crazy good talent across the board, fab music, astute and Chardonnay-free judging, and who just may be my personal savior (stole that one from you, Linda)- Mia Michaels. Her choreography brings me to my knees, or as one of the amazing, breathless dancers in the cast, who had been gifted with this lady’s moves in a solid routine said afterwards, “With Mia, it’s so much more than dancing”. This woman’s brilliance continues to wow me time and time again. Her heartbreak, her fears, her power, her joys, her passion are all served up fresh and hot every week. Literally. The abs on some of those guys..yummmm-o. She takes everything we homo sapiens feel, rolls it up in a ball and then throws it right back at us whether we’re ready for it or not. The fluidity of movement, the fusion of life, heart and dance all come together to tell a story every episode and the tunes she picks to help her dancers express that is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It just works. The other choreographers are terrific as well but it's the kids on this show that make me just so darn proud. and I’m not even their Mama! Nah, these boys and gals aren’t texting and hanging out at the local Carlos and Charlies..they are workin' it and their commitment, professionalism and magic are an inspiration. The cast of 20 (paired into 10 couples who are slowly whittled down as the weeks go by) come from all over the nation and they bring it to the table each and every week, without fail. No whining. No passing the buck. The judge's critique is always accurate, fair and compassionate...and at times just a wee bit shrill- thanks to the excited screams of one of them who a pal o' mine likens to “Marie Osmond on crack”. It does what Idol should do- lets America pick the three bottom (if there even is such a thing, unlike the other show which is generally easy to do) but then allows the professionals to decide on what should happen next. At least until it gets down to the wire and all equally amazing artists are in place for the finish. I mean, does some couch potato in Poughkeepsie really know his Pringle from a releve..or intonation?

It has something for everybody- ballroom, hip-hop, contemporary, Broadway and some Krump thrown in for you cutting edge types. So pour yourself a stiffie and settle into some good T.V. But be warned- if you’re my age or close to it...your back will be hurting by the end. Click here for the moves.

...and don't even get me going on Wade Robson's stuff!