Gimme a Hand for My Invention

A granddaughter gave me a hand today. Oh, I don’t mean applause, which I wasn’t looking for anyway.
But I also wasn’t looking for a Christmas present that would shoot me back to Mrs. Findley’s kindergarten back in the 20th century.
Technically, Amelia didn’t give me the hand, although she can make some mean paddy cakes at the age of 5 months. Rather, the granddaughter's mom, my daughter Annie, gave me Amelia's hand. Not her hand, really, but the impression of the tyke’s paw.
BAM! It time-traveled me immediately to Mrs. Findley’s classroom in the bowels of a public school on the northeast edge of Nebraska in the mid-’50s. It was before the nuke scares set in, so there were no desks to hide under when the inevitable attack came from the Commies.
Actually, we didn’t have desks, anyway. After all, it was kindergarten; as memory serves, we had tables, and, of course, nap mats.
Come Mother’s Day, Mrs. Findley set us about one of the time-honored traditions: making our hand imprints in clay. Of course, I couldn’t make one for my mom, because she had died when I was 2 (that always made Mother’s Day presents awkward), so I made one for my grandmother, with whom we lived.
So you can imagine how Amelia’s hand stirred my memory banks.
But more importantly, it ka-POWED me with an idea for an invention. I don’t know why nobody has thought of it before, but I stand to make a bazillion dollars.
I’m going to form a company to make kits so grandparents can make plaster casts of their hands for posterity. After all, the point of the kindergarten hands is so we can remember the kids after they are grown, until the time we forget whoinHELL they are as they change our diapers.
And the point of grandparent hand casts will be so the grandkids can remember us when we’re gone. Dead. Caput. Pushing up daisies. Turning to dust so future generations will have something to make clay out of so they can make handcasts.
It’s a marvel to see how teensy-tiny Amelia’s hand is, about as wide from thumb tip to pinkie tip as my pointer finger. Some day, we’ll sit around telling her how small her hands were, and what a miracle it is that she’s grown.
“See how SMALL your hands were,” we’ll say.
Considering the day we’re celebrating, that prompts me to acknowledge Somebody who started out soooooooooooooo small that his hands was as tiny as Amelia’s are now. And before it was all over, the child reached the point where He holds the whole world in his hands. Amazing, eh?
As for those of us who haven’t been around since the beginning of time, some day, when I reach the end of my time, and I’m gone, the grandkids will sit around and look at my handprint and say with amazement: “JEEZ, Papa Mike’s hands were SMALL.”
Because they are, my hands, small. Girlie, in fact (no offense to girls).
I suspect that my hand size is one reason I never became a basketball star everybody might have called just Mike. I coulda been been a contenda so good I’d have needed just the one name, like Michael. But I prefer the shortened version because the nuns insisted I use Michael; kind of a rebellion once I slipped the surly bonds of Catholic school.
Alas, basketball stardom was not to be, although there was one time, the game when I was the hero who won the contest with brilliant play and two last-second free throws that won the game by 1 point. But I don’t want to brag, so I won’t go into the time I beat the Indians (no offense to Native Americans, either, as the team really was made up of Indians back in my native Nebraska) and my teammates carried me off the floor on their shoulders.
I figure I can sell the kits on TV, between the “Clap Hands for lights commercials” and the “I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up” come-ons.
Genius, eh? The closest thing to my invention would be the cement boots mobsters use when they send people to swim with the fishes. Even if they have patented that process, I’m sure patent’s still open for grandparent hands, which I think I’ll call GrandHands.
Like I said, I’ll make a bazillion bucks, because everybody would want to buy one — if not grandparents, then their own children, to preserve their heritage for their kids.
Well, everybody would buy one except me. I have this thing, you see, that I don’t like to get my hands dirty unless absolutely necessary. Oh, I’ve done my share of planting in the dirt and even concrete mixing, but I don’t like it (don’t even like to go barefoot on the beach because I don’t like sand in my shoes).
I've got enough Monk in me not to want to encrust my hands in plaster. I'd have to use more wipes than a theater full of wimmin watching "Beaches" would use sheets of cleenex (or ONE guy watching "Brian's Song").
Nope, I wouldn’t do it for anybody or anything. Not nobody, nohow. Not even for history. But maybe, just maybe, for grandkids.
We’ll see. Keep an eye out for GrandHands, on a late-night TV commercial near you. (Maybe I’ll call ’em GrandHands-WOW, and affiliate with Sham-WOW.)
Have a great Christmas weekend and peaceful and joyful New Year.
And enjoy my Christmas collage.



Two babies from two families, Allison and Amelia.
















Brendan and Erica and the Bun in the Oven. (In first photo, Erica's on the left, and Brendan's on the right, clowning around. Or is it vice versa?)





The Four Horsemen (gotta LOVE that shot with the wifebeater shirts, no?)



Anthony, the stud muffin football star.







Annie in her first life, clowning around backstage as drama queen in high school.














Allison and Gammon

Mr. Monk Used My Noodle on THIS Investigation

My favorite TV series, “Monk,” may have ended with one of the best series finales EVER the other night, but the spirit of Monk will live on whenever and wherever a mystery arises. (Or a picture frame is crooked, or a napkin is out of place.)
Or when there’s potential for a fraud case to crack, such as Campbell’s claim that every single can of its chicken noodle soup has 32 feet of noodles. Not just every 10th can, or every 100th, but every single one.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw the commercial touting such a patently outrageous figure, and neither could anybody else I told. After all, we all know how small the can is: The fact that 32 feet of anything could be in such a tiny cylinder is preposterous! Patently ridiculous. Defiant of the imagination.
Indeed, such a claim demands to be challenged. To be discovered for the flat-out lie it is and exposed to the American public. No, not just the American public, but the entire world, and perhaps, the universe.
So I asked myself WWMD: What Would Monk Do? Why, of course, he’d investigate. So, armed with a case of wipes and with assistants at my elbows, I embarked on an experiment to expose the Campbell’s Kids as the lying little rugrats they are.
Here’s what happened:
The cast:
* I was Monk, of course, as I’ve got a few OCD tendencies of my own.

* 8-year-old Vincent played Lt. Randy Disher (Vincent doesn’t have enough of a cookie duster to be Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer).
* Kate portrayed the dutiful assistant, initially cast as Sharona on “Monk,” later replaced with Natalie. She handed me wipes when my fingers got too chicken-juicy and chronicled the event for the camera, from the placement of the first noodle to the last.
I had to spurn her advice, as Monk was wont to do with Sharona and Natalie, because, well, because she either just doesn’t have enough OCD tendencies herself or she’s scientifically challenged or she’s just a lousy damn investigator.
How could I be so harsh? Well, get aload of THIS: After I mentioned that each noodle appeared to be 2 inches long, and I had laboriously placed about 2 feet of noodles in the street gutter that served as my petri dish, she piped up: “Uh, Mr. Monk, I mean, MIKE, just count the noodles in the 2 feet and count the noodles in the can and multiply … ”
“No,” I replied, not kindly. “I can’t take a shortcut when I’m challenging a conglomerate like Campbell’s. This isn’t rocket science, but it demands a scientific approach, and I won’t allow Campbell’s to write me off as another Chicken Little global warmer.”
(By the way, speaking of global warming, how about that snow in Texas this past weekend? An inconvenient snowfall, Mr. Gore?)

Not that I wasn’t tempted, mind you: After I had aligned 12 feet of noodles, my back ached from bending over and my knees nearly bled because I had spurned Sharona’s, uh, Natalie’s, uh, Kate’s advice to put jeans on instead of shorts as I knelt on the asphalt.
(After all, unlike Monk, I’d worn these shorts for two weeks without washing them, and I wasn’t about to shed my uniform for comfort.)
At 24 feet, with my back screaming and knees barking, I nearly relented, but I rejected the temptation, saying, “MM-mmm, good(ness NO).”
At 28 feet of noodling, another thing besides my aching, aging bones started to waver: my faith. It appeared that this was going to be a close contest, that Campbell’s might, indeed, be telling the truth instead of dishing out a bunch of bull, uh, I mean, bouillon.
At 30 feet, I realized I might have to eat some crow, if not noodles.
I dodged a bullet, though, when the final measurement came in: The noodles stretched a mere 31 feet 10 inches!
I was vindicated, and Campbell’s had been exposed as the lying conglomerate it is: and to kids yet, WITH kids. Kids lying to kids for the almighty buck.
I felt a surge of excitement about the opportunity to drag the money-grubbing, international conglomerate into court and, before it was over, I would have owned Campbell’s. I started running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
However, before I had a chance to gloat, and certainly before I had the opportunity to call my attorney (it was Sunday, after all), Monk’s Trudy appeared before me, as if in a vision, and played the role of conscience.
And none other than Monk himself whispered in my ear: “She’s RIGHT, Sherlock. There’s more to the story, as there are in so many cases.”
I needn’t ask WWMD in this case. I knew what I had to do.

Here’s what happened THEN: I looked at my noodle trail, as it stretched nearly to the horizon, fading in the distance like a railroad track’s steel bars joining each other before disappearing on the prairie.
My noodle tracks occasionally veered off center and frequently curled instead of remaining straight. That obviously would affect the measurement. I concluded that, if I had been able to straighten them all out, the final measurement easily would have passed the 32 feet.
So I bend a bloody knee to Campbell’s and acknowledge the truth of its commercial.
Lest you ask why I didn’t count another can, I’ll point out that I had intended to and had even bought two cans. Well, Monk and I are OCD, but we’re not total FOOLS: I was tired of people driving by and wondering what I was doing.
Noodle mystery: solved.
I can’t help but wonder, though, how many chickens died for that can of soup. Or, for that matter, how many tomatoes are in a can of tomato soup. And how many mushrooms get creamed for a can of sauce to cover my pork chops. (Care to compute, Campbell’s?)

P.S.: Obviously, I can’t claim that no noodles were injured in this experiment, but I can state categorically that none was wasted. We enlisted two cockapoos to clean up the mess: Dewey slurped up 28 feet of the noodles (I don’t expect him to deposit a 28-footer, if you know what I mean, but you never know), and his sister, Jazzy, ate the nearly 4 feet remaining. And, of course, I ate the chicken chunks and drank the fowl bouillon.

Vincent Hears Voices Saying: 'Feet, keep WALKIN'

It seems like only yesterday that Vincent couldn't even walk, and now the 8-year-old's on the run. Well, not now, but he was on the lam for awhile the other day in an incident that panicked everybody.
Except him, of course — after all, he was the only one who knew he wasn't lost, or worse.
One of his parents usually picks him up at school, parking out on the street and walking up to the school. (That’s a far sight better than the other option of queuing up in a snaking line of cars longer than the phalanxes of girls who elbowed their way into theaters during the recent opening weekend of "The Twilight Saga; New Moon." I've picked him up a couple of times, so I can attest to the fact that the procession offers a grueling experience, sometimes leaving you feeling as if you're camping overnight to get concert tickets for a Gene Pitney concert.)
Some days, though, Vincent walks out toward the street to wait near the traffic light/crossing guard for Mom or Dad. But one day, his feet didn't stop at the light but veered right, and he kept right on walking — off the school grounds, and down the sidewalk heading home.
When Melissa trekked up to the school, the teacher said he had started walking, so they assumed he would be out by the light.
Bedlam ensued. School officials were concerned, and Melissa was frantic. Those who might wonder why Vincent would have abandoned kindergartener brother Jack at the school door must be only children: There comes a time when a cool, self-respecting second-grader just has to break out on his own, and leave younger siblings in his wake.
Melissa retrieved Jack and handed him off to a mom friend who kept him in her van while Melissa leaped into her own van with 3-year-old Luke and 1-year-old Patrick, who were asleep. Then she drove around frantically searching for her first-borne, urging herself to be calm while her Mama Bear instincts surged at the thought that something might have happened to him.
"I told myself," she confided to me, "that first I was gonna HUG him, and then I was gonna KILL him."
Of course, she forgot to kill him, but she nearly hugged him to death. She explained that she wasn’t angry at him (rather, she confessed a little pride at his showing an independent streak he inherited from her).
But she made it clear that NEXT time, he would, indeed, be in trouble.
He assured her that there wouldn’t be a next time.
She allowed as how his escapade had surprised everybody because it was so out of character for him. He normally is a rule keeper’s rule keeper.
Indeed, he said, "You know who it surprised the MOST, Mommy? ME! I was walking to meet you and when I didn’t see you, something in my head kept saying, 'Feet, keep WALKIN'. Keep WALKIN.'"
The day after the incident, Melissa told me it was 45 minutes until she had him in the van. Chances are, it was more like 20 minutes, maybe even just 10, and she’s just being dramatic. But I suppose it seemed like almost an hour, to a frantic mom (but what do I know?).
I’d wager that, as years go by, some day, when Melissa’s my age and Vincent, hers — and I’m a distant memory and a faded picture on the wall whose grandfather tales have long since been relegated to some dusty archives in cyberspace — they’ll be sitting around a holiday table regaling each other with stories about adventures long past.
By then, the story will have grown legs and Jack will pipe up, “Remember the time Vincent abandoned me at school and was lost for HOURS, and nobody could find him, and the school went into lockdown, and the sheriff’s department sent up helicopters and marshaled the canine patrol, and the state police have blasted forth an Amber Alert, and the national guard called a battalion back from Afghanistan, and President Obama called on ACORN to quit organizing communities (and votes) and organize a search instead, and the United Nations declared an international emergency, and we STILL couldn’t find him?”
Melissa will rock back in her chair, bouncing a couple of grandkids on her knees and nod knowingly, saying, “Yes, you little dears, we almost lost your daddy that day. Land sakes, what a DAY. I searched for that boy for DAYS!”
But for now, she thought he needed at least to apologize to the assistant principal. She doesn’t believe in idle exercises, so she had the lad convey his remorse, and contrition, in writing.

Although I can make light of the incident now because it had a happy ending, the sad side is that we have to be so frightened today about our kids’ welfare. Back when granddad was a lad, our parents admonished us not to take candy from strangers, but I never ran across a stranger even offering an all-day sucker (believe me, I was on the lookout for one, because I was a poor drycleaner’s son who got only a few pennies every other Friday [if it was a good week] to buy some penny candy). And none of my friends saw that stranger, either.
What’s more, we could roam our little towns at will, disappearing in the morning and not darkening the doorstep ’til dark. Nobody worried.
These days, you can’t let a child out of your sight.
Vincent has vowed that there won’t be a next time, but I can imagine that if there happened to be, he wouldn’t be listening to his feet.
Rather, he’ll be pleading with them, resurrecting that saying that even predates granddad: “FEET, don't FAIL me now!”

Meanwhile, here’s the reunited family, with Vincent on the right, with the others, from his right, being Mom (age classified secret, although I think she looks pretty dadgummed good for somebody who's damnnear 40!), with 1-year-old Patrick Michael on her lap and 6-year-old Jack behind her, and Dad holding 3-year-old Luke.



Melissa obviously can keep her mind on the task at hand, while the others’ eyes seem to be straying. Whatever on EARTH could be attracting their attention? Well, perhaps they are staring, in awe, at the 9-pound, maybe 10-pound, bass I caught Thanksgiving Day (don't fret, though, I pardoned him and released him, unlike turkeys throughout the land). And that's no fish tail tale — as this photo proves. Also, lest you imagine that's a huge paunch you see me (left) carrying, BESIDES the bass, before even partaking of a Thanksgiving repast, my abs obviously are bulging to hold the behemoth from the deep.)


HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YA.

Now We'll NEVER Get the Kid Out of His (or Her) Womb

Well, they — whoevertheHECK they are — say parents-to-be should talk to their budding offspring in the womb.
Actually, parents-to-be is the wrong term, because when a bun is in the oven, they technically are parents already. And, even though Brendan is firm in not wanting to know the gender, and Erica is honoring his wishes (as far as I know, anyway, although there’s the distinct possibility that she knows and already has bought a bunch of blue, or pink, clothes), they are parents.
They — and, as I said, whoevertheHECK they are — say you should play calming music to calm the budding infant; perhaps elevator music of Barry Manilow’s greatest hit, I suppose. (I use the singular form of “hit” at the risk of offending Manilow fans because, well, the world is made up of two kinds of people: Manilow fans and those who make fun of him, for some reason. Seems kind of mean, because he’s obviously a huge talent. I’m not sure how I ended up on the wrong side of his soundtracks, but here I am.)
I suppose it would be better to play Manilow’s “I Can’t Smile Without You” to calm the child rather than scare the hell out of him/her by exposing it to the “Hellboy II” flick that featured the song. (If we only KNEW whether it’s a boy or a girl, and if it were a boy, I could say the song would scare the HELL outta the boy.)



I suppose there’s some truth to the singing-to-calm-the-baby-in-the-womb theory, which basically seems to be it eases the baby’s angst about all the other noises out here in the netherworld. But who can prove it, because none of us remembers what we heard in the womb? After all, we were preoccupied with kicking Mom so she and Dad could watch the poke from her belly.
Anecdotally, though, I have these observations:

Either Vincent wasn’t prepared properly inside the womb, or he was just too sensitive once he got outside, or, MOST likely, Melissa and Skip were just too dadgum protective. All of us visitors literally had to tiptoe around the house because the lad jumped at the slightest noise and squinted if you even tried to open a shade. So they lived in nearly total silence and darkness for his first several months.

Mom and Dad let their guard down a tad with Jack, and you could even carry on a conversation above a whisper when he was a baby. He just wasn’t as jumpy as the firstborn.

The decibel level rose a bit more when Luke was in the womb, because it’s hard to keep a couple of toddlers quiet, and Vincent and Jack were anything but quiet.

By the time an egg and a sperm got together to generate what one day would emerge as Patrick, the noise level around their household was nothing short of the junction of all the runways at a major airport.
In short, by that time, Vincent, Jack and Luke had become accustomed to raising such a ruckus that Patrick has been able to sleep through any noise from the get-go. He had become accustomed to the thunder in the womb.
Which brings us back to Brendan and Erica. Erica slipped me a photo of my son singing to his son — or daughter, who knows? — at a recent wedding they attended.
Well, they’ll be lucky if child services doesn’t come knocking on their door, because I’ve heard Brendan sing, and I think it could be classified as child abuse. (I know, because I think he inherited his pipes from me, and the list of my greatest hits isn’t anywhere near as long as Manilow’s.)
But Erica’s note made it sound like such a sweet gesture, singing “Sweet Child of Mine” to a baby in its mother’s womb. Erica noted that the DJ was playing that song at the wedding reception they were attending (pay no attention to what appears to be a beer cup in Brendan’s hand; I’m sure he’s the type who would forgo imbibing out of sympathy for mommy’s having to do the same).
My assumption of sweetness arose from the fact that I never had heard of the song, but it seems so lullabyish, not unlike a Barry Manilow song. So I checked YouTube, and found THIS:



Well, I guess the Guns ’N Roses melody (if you can call it that) isn’t about a baby after all — at least, not the infant type, although it’s obviously a girl.
But if he/she survives the eardrum-breaking cacophony of Brendan’s doing a Guns ’N Roses karaoke gig at a wedding reception, the child should be able to survive anything.
It’s better than facing post-partum depression if he/she were dragged out of the womb, kicking and screaming out of fear that Barry Manilow wrote all the songs that made the whole world sing — Barry Manilow songs. Speaking of, let's at least give Manilow his due — he's a good sport, after all — with a sing-along:

Good GOLLY, Kids, You're in for a LONG Haul!

I never have given voice to the old saying, "I can sleep when I'm dead," because I appreciate a strategically placed nap.
By that I mean: a nap I place strategically during the day, in a strategically comfortable place. Or, if I can’t do THAT, I’ll just nod off anywhere, as long as I’m not on a ledge of the umpire state building. (No, that’s not a typo, but rather a genuflection to the fact that the umpiring in the various stages of the Fall Classic this season makes the boys in blue likely candidates to be, well, pushed off the Empire State Building.)
Still, lots of party animals and workaholics live by the phrase, allowing them to party hardy or work their fingers to the bone. Thus, they end up with bloodshot eyes and boney fingers.
And THAT reminds me of the old Hoyt Axton song, “Boney Fingers.” Come on, set a spell and sing along:

Kinda makes a guy need a nap, eh?
It'll be up to the boys and Amelia and the mystery grandchild to decide whether to be nappers or surrender to boney fingers. And even though they resist naps today (well, the extra-wombals [kind of like extraterrestirals] do, anyway), they'd better wise up, and soon, because they could be awake years, or even DECADES, longer than today's partyers and workers.
ForGET about the impact on Social Security, because that will be long gone by the time today’s babies reach 100, as more than HALF of the babies born today in rich countries will do, if present life-expectancy trends continue, according to a study in a recent issue of The Lancet medical journal.
The kids will rue the day they spurned Papa Mike’s exhortations to take a nap when they’re 97 or 98 and just dawg tired.
In the 20th century, most developed countries saw an increase of around 30 years in life expectancy, according to an AFP story on the report. In 1950, only 15 percent to 16 percent of 80-year-old women, and just 12 percent of octogenarian men, made it to the age of 90 in advanced economies.
In 2002, this had risen to 37 percent and 25 percent, respectively. In Japan , the survival rate from 80 to 90 is now more than 50 percent for women.
"If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays," AFP quoted the Lancet study as saying.
So, if I get to retire by, say, 85, I wonder when my grandkids will be able to (especially if I’m sleeping in their back bedrooms, assuming they don’t just slap me in a nursing home).
The researchers thought of that angle, too, saying that, instead of working for a long, intense spell and then retiring, "individuals could combine work, education, leisure, and child-rearing in varying amounts at different ages."
"The 20th century was a century of redistribution of income. The 21st century could be a century of redistribution of work," the study authors wrote.
In other words, kids, PACE yourselves, or your boney fingers won’t last as long as the rest of your bodies.
As for your faces, you might consider some exercises to banish the wrinkles:


But eventually you still could end up as wrinkled as an elephant’s trunk, singing Raymond Crooke’s Twilight Blues. I don’t know whoinhell Ray Crooke is, but I think his song’s got a nice beat and the message is morbidly humorous:


And I’ll close with this thought, kiddos: Have a good (and looonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng) life! But don’t eat too much of your Halloween candy at one setting. Speaking of, I don't have pictures of ALL the grandkids in their outfits, but that's OK, because I don't want to be like those totally obnoxious grandparents shoving pix down people's throats.
However, I do happen to have one of Amelia, the little bugger:



Not to be outdone, here's Patrick, a cute little Yoda is he, eh? Chowing down on a cookie at a Halloween party is he.

Sorry, Kids, We've Acted Like a Bull in a China Closet With Our Borrowing

I owe my grandkids an apology, and an explanation:
* The apology is for breaking into their piggy banks (before a couple of them even have piggy banks) — to the tune of damnnear 40 grand apiece.
* The explanation is to clue them in as to why they might see a TV commercial that features U.S. kids pledging allegiance to China, of all places on Earth.
Before I offer up either, five lads and a lassie, I’ll note that, as Sonny and Cher used to sing, “You’d better sit down, kids … ” because this is staggering news.
Now, the apology: I’m sorry that our government’s financial fog obscured the borrowing quagmire it would plunge into in a vain attempt to remain afloat. That’s why, at this writing, when you are 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 8 years, and 16 years old, each of you owes the tidy sum of $38,519.22 (and rising) in taxes to cover our national deficit of at least $9 trillion. (Some estimates suggest it's closing in on $12 trillion.)
Don’t even think about trying to tap your parents for a loan to bail you out of your taxation for our government’s bailout. They also are on the hook for $38,519.22 apiece, as am I.
At your young ages, you justifiably might want to wail, “We’re victims of taxation without representation,” and our Founding Fathers would come back from the dead to argue your case.
The Obama administration is taking the brunt of criticism because its unbridled spending plans have escalated the borrowing, but I must confess that we all — Democrats, Republicans, Independents, No-Parties, Reds, Blues, and Purples — share the blame.
We also share the shame for the commercial in which children are pledging allegiance to China. Oh, we didn’t create the commercial, which I regard as a rather novel illustration of the ramifications of our government’s escalating borrowing.
The schoolchildren, you see, are pledging allegiance not only to acknowledge our towering debt to China but also to lament the volcanic ramifications to their own financial futures:
"I pledge allegiance to America's debt . . . and to the Chinese government that lends us money . . . And to the interest . . . for which we pay . . . Compoundable . . . with higher taxes . . . and lower pay . . . until the day we die."

Check out the commercial:



Credit (as in accolades, not a credit card, although it IS a priceless piece of work) for the commercial goes to the Employment Policies Institute, which recently launched a multimillion-dollar ad blitz to decry the peril of unsustainable borrowing and spending. The nonprofit research institution's campaign aims to marshal sentiment to reverse the government's multitrillion-dollar deficit spending.
Ironically, China was a joke when granddad was a lad, because it seemed as if everything cheap was labeled “Made in China.” Although Chinese products continue to wreak havoc because of health hazards to us in recent years, the Asian country is getting the last laugh — because it’s cheap no longer.
Indeed, it’s so wealthy that we’re groveling to borrow money "Made in China," and it has become one of our major creditors. Less ironically, the Employment Policies Institute’s ad effort kicked off even as the Office of Management and Budget issued its own estimate of more than $9 trillion in deficit spending.
"This campaign is all about getting people to understand the frightening reality of the massive federal deficit," says Richard Berman, the institute’s executive director. "People do not realize just how much $9 trillion is and what it will take for our country to get out from under that level of debt.”
The ad campaign aims to provide perspective on how mammoth the mountain of debt is, according to the institute.
“Americans also don't realize how much money we now owe to foreign governments and just how unsustainable our current level of spending is,” Berman says. “We have to do something to defeat the debt NOW, or we will live to regret it."
Uh-OH, grandkids, I hate to admit it, but our shameless pickpocketing from the future obviously has reached a shameful point. We have done something that not only we will live to regret, but you will, too.
What an embarrassing legacy to leave you.
As Liza and Joel sang in “Cabaret,” money makes the world go round.



These days, the world's economy is on a slow boat to China.

When Life Gives You a Lemonade Stand, Make MONEY

Alan Jackson might turn to Jimmy Buffett for advice on what to do around 5 o’clock, but grandson Jack appears to lean more toward another Buffett for counsel. Indeed, I suspect that Jack might have uncovered a secret that The Oracle of Omaha himself has kept close to the vest as he has accumulated billions over the decades.
Make no mistake about it, 5-year-old Jack loves to have fun, and I fully expect him to take a trip to Margaritaville some day. And even though I might be long gone by then, I can envision his impish grin and mischievous shrug as he intones: “Well, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”



Sooo, even though I’m positive that all work and no play could make Jack a dull boy, he took a serious entrepreneurial turn the other day when he decided to set up a lemonade stand. He took to the task resolutely, ignoring the intimidating element (Warren) Buffett’s Coca-Cola holdings might have offered to a one-stand man.
In that respect, Jack’s venture reminded me of one of (Warren) Buffett’s guiding principles: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”



Jack's version of the slogan: Be greedy when others fear that they might go thirsty.
Even though Jack’s was a solo venture, he had a firm business plan: 8-year-old brother Vincent made the sign, and Jack assigned him, as the taller of the two, to hold it aloft as a business magnet. Meanwhile, Jack the real business magnate, perched himself on a little stool, all the better to reach the money box he had decorated with lemons and dollar signs.
Although Jack allowed Mom to brew a mess of lemonade, he banished her to the sidelines thereafter. “If they see my mom,” he explained to her, “they’d think I’m a kid, and I want them to think I’m an adult.”
Ahhhhhh, deceptive advertising, banking on the fact that passersby wouldn’t guess that a lad a tad over 3 feet was a full-fledged adult, with arrested development, perhaps.
Times being what they are, and Mom being who she is, she didn’t want to leave her charges standing in the driveway with the potential of perfect strangers casing the juice joint. So she busied herself in the background, pretending to do yard work and such so she could keep an eye on them at the same time.
So there you have it: What would Warren Buffett do? The secret to success, the basic rule of Business 101, the capitalist mainstay: Don’t let your mom stand next to you if you want people to take you seriously as an adult and let you make scads of money.
And I bet — I just BET — that little Warren Buffett might have told his mommy, lo these many years ago, to go inside their humble Nebraska house so people would think he was an adult. Oh, I know, you’ve never heard that before, but you don’t expect him to reveal the real secret to his success do you?
Well, let me ask you this, then: Have you ever seen Warren Buffett’s mom lurking in the background around Berkshire Hathaway ventures?
I rest my case: The Sage of Omaha quite possibly dreamed up his slogan about greed and fear to hide the REAL secret behind his success: untying himself from mom’s apron strings.
Of course, Melissa rarely, if ever, wears an apron, but the gist is the same.
By the way, Jack and his assistant collected $6.95 in the lemon- and dollar-decorated money box.
Look out Warren Buffett; and move over, Jimmy Buffett. Jack, the Sage of Suburban Palm Beach County just might edge out W on the Forbes list and just might buy Margaritaville right out from under J.