Miss Helen

Hey there you sweet people.

I find myself greeting various groups with these words quite often. They are magic words, or maybe more accurately, spiritually charged words. After the greeting, I find myself believing that the persons I greet are indeed, sweet.

They are not my words. They will forever belong to Helen Blalock. Helen finally decided that Trudy and Max could make it on their own and went on to heaven early this morning, where I am sure she has already greeted many sweet people in her life that went on before she did.

Helen took care of children in Oneonta for a long, long time. Right there at her house, behind the Dairy Queen. Hundreds of kids were told that they were sweet. Some probably didn't hear that opinion directed their way very often.

Jesus talked of a kind of strength in gentleness. Southern writers have written of steel magnolias. Steel does not seem to describe Helen. Steel is too hard and cold. Miss Helen was anything but hard and cold. But she was strong. The kind of strong that comes from love.

So, I just wanted to let you know that we are all going to have to step it up a notch in the love department. Helen took a lot with her when she went. But, she left a whole lot with us.

So, let's honor Helen's life by loving somebody, maybe even somebody not so loveable. Instead of looking for the fault, let's look for the good.

And maybe you would like to try her spiritually charged greeting. It can change your life, you sweet people.

Totally unfayzed . . .

Did you see the video on all the news outlets this morning which showed a man on the beach in Florida, close to Miami, as Hurricane Fay was making landfall? The wind was coming in from the gulf onto the land at about 65 mph. So, this man decided it was the perfect chance to para-sail. As the video begins he is standing on the beach. You seem him violently jerked up into the air about 20 or 30 feet, then slammed into the beach and dragged about 20 or 30 feet, then picked back up about 15 feet and hurled at what looks to be about 40 mph straight inland. The problem is that someone built a condominium right there along the beach. He slammed into the condo wall and crumpled to the ground. I think he was hurt pretty bad. You can see it at http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/weather/2008/08/19/florida.kite.boarder.wfor

I know it is wrong to want to watch it again, but come on, you want to, don't you?

I suppose this kite man thought it was a good idea at the time. His biggest problem was he didn't have a clue which way the wind was blowing.

A good life lesson in there somewhere . . . I mean other than don't para-sail in a hurricane.

Spanning the globe . . .

Saturday morning. Coffee. USA vs. Spain in basketball. It just does not get better than this.

Except that it does. I had my own little international moment this morning. Thanks to Skype I had coffee and conversation with a bunch of friends who gathered in Birzai, Lithuania, and one who gathered in Birmingham. It started as a video conference. I am sure that was pretty frightening for my Baltic friends. It was 7:00 a.m. here, 3:00 p.m.there. I don't normally expose my Saturday a.m. look to anyone, much less go international. But they were charitable.

We had business to discuss about Chrysalis in the Baltics. Exciting stuff. Those young people are doing amazing work. But at the end of the conference was one of those unexpected moments, a Kairos moment. It was initiated by Patrick Friday, who is gifted in such things. He suggested we all sing a few songs. At first we all just laughed. Then it became clear that Patrick was going to make us sing. So we did. Tentatively at first. "From the rising of the sun . . ." Then "Jesus, Jesus, can I tell you how I feel . . .", then "Spirit of the Living God . . ." then "Give Thanks, with a grateful heart . . ." We all sang. From opposite sides of the Atlantic. Then we prayed. Each of us in our own language.

Man, I love Saturday morning.

We'll always have Paris . . .

The story goes that Sigmund Freud, who made a living in part by studying, analyzing, writing and lecturing about the role of the phallic symbol in our psyche, was smoking a cigar one day. A student asked him what the cigar symbolized.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

But sometimes it's not. Ask Bill Clinton.

It's just become to hard to know when it is and when it isn't.

John McCain was somewhere in middle America today at a biker rally. He addressed the group and drew his biggest applause when he suggested that his wife could enter the group's beauty contest, "Miss Buffalo Chip". As it turns out the contest includes showing a lot of skin and doing some pretty crude things not completely unrelated to the aforementioned Freud discussion. I don't believe McCain knew that. And I am sure he wasn't serious about his wife entering the competition. It was just supposed to be a joke. Maybe it was inappropriate, but I kinda thought it was funny.

You'd a thought the man had committed a major foreign policy blunder.

Obama repeated something earlier this week that he has said several times the past few months. He doesn't look like the presidents on the money, he is young, he's got big ears, and did you notice, he was black. I realize there was a serious element to what he said, but he was laughing as he said it, and the crowd he was addressing was laughing with him.

The statement has been analyzed, criticized and publicized until it probably affected the national polls as much as off shore drilling.

If we keep this up, if we don't let these guys have a few moments where they can be themselves addressing the few hundred or thousand people in front of them, we may lose our best opportunity to know who they really are.

If everything they say is dissected and the post mortem published before they get back in their car, then eventually their handlers are going to pull in the reins to the point that their real voices are choked.

I believe that John McCain really enjoyed joking about his wife being in the beauty contest. I like that about him. I think Obama is at his best when he is relaxed and laughing at himself or at his opponents while relating to his audience.

Real people make mistakes. They don't always say everything just right. And if you want to, you can be offended. Maybe sometimes you should be offended. But if we make it where they can't afford to speak freely, we will never get to know them at all. And we will miss some good laughs. And we need all the laughs we can get.

I don't like the negative campaign tactics that McCain has apparently thought were necessary this week. I am one of the minority that believes that a couple of cigars in his TV ad were not just cigars.

But even that regretful tactic has been good for a few laughs. An unlikely heroine has emerged to give us perspective. Paris Hilton. McCain played the Paris Hilton card. But Paris Hilton upped the ante. For a laugh check this out. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d

One of these guys is going to be our president. Yeah, I am definitely for one of them. But they are both good guys.

At ease. If you got 'em, smoke 'em.