Playing is a fun way to exercise, for both you and your cat….

Thank you for the message of hope. Life is short. How we choose to focus our energies is important.

Not because you’re going to run out of energy, but because of the after-effects of each focus.

Not many people differentiate. How boring this world’s getting as of late.

Another key ingredient in hope for me is leadership. I need more to sustain my hope than a simple attitude adjustment. …

I would be more hopeful if I got the sense that leaders were hearing the real and wide spread anxieties of people and developing common sense solutions for our fears that are grounded in real facts on the ground around us.

Sometimes you feel like an “everyman” who is fulfilling destinies on behalf of several others who aren’t, seemingly, doing — or being — anything in their own lives. You take strident jumps ahead and find those you were hoping to impress so far behind that, they no longer could even be in or upon the audience; no, they’re gone. Loved ones can sometimes be so far out of bounds that the impression you hoped to have upon them is gone, ribbed, boned, turned like a flower to a whisp, a dried milkweed that could float on a hundred miles of wind for all it’s worth, to yet more milkweed I’m sure somewhat but to the rest, but more milkweed.

I am afraid for example of the accumulating impact of escalating health care costs and the impact of the rising tide of the uninsured in this country.

Something I couldn’t, really I can’t, say to the any and every average person is that… listen; you can’t expect somebody else to take after you and take care of you. We are somehow conditioned to expect doctors and scientists of … questionable merit, questionable motive, questionable intellect and opportune to… to take us up and somehow make us better, truly like some magic that we’re just plugging a mysterious, endless resource into: but really, the health you’ve always enjoyed always came from within you without interruption.

You can’t pay anyone for what you were born with.

Not even through a hundred degrees of good intentions, taxes, and retribution.

I am fearful of the impact on the world of rising energy costs and diminishing supplies.

There are a lot of energy holders who are nowhere near shy of “what it takes to stay ahead”. You might consider some towns where a typical Lansing energy expenditure, resulting in about $80.00, a winter-month at most, somehow results in a solid $200-plus bill every month of the year. How you can’t seem to go to those departments and complain because everybody in town tells you, “listen — you don’t **** with these people. They run the town.”

Maybe you’re not familiar with that kind of power.

Listen… there’s little to nothing stopping you and many Americans from putting up your own power sources and turning BACK energy to the plants that will actually result in credits on your bill. *Shrug* who gives a **** if you get a credit? If you’re powering your own house, you aren’t paying anyone, and that’s a fact.

The whole question is, like many things in life, “are you going to take matters into your own hands”? A lot of people have — and, strangely enough (or not), a lot of people have suffered.

Let’s consider the power struggles that are sometimes created. In the name of … well, good intentions, I have to cross a line and mention a certain conundrum faced by residents of certain areas of Chicago.

Places where Chicago Edison are owned by Robeco, a surprising little adjunct of, well yes, The Vatican.

*Ahem*

And, being as it is, neighborhoods where people have problems that are a little larger than just bills and sockets when they are having “power struggles”.

Listen. The issue of where our Tesla-AC power is going to be fed in-or-out of, for probably the next 50 years, is going to be determined not by who owns the copper cord, the platinum plates, or the silver oxides, but who’s willing to go ahead and generate what they can for whatever gain they can receive from it, no matter what. For some, that gain is going to be, compared to the lives of many others, “larger than life”.

That’s been a fact for a long time, and probably will continue to be for a long time. The fact is, when you generate your own e-lec-tri-city, you take your own life in your own hands, and depending on where you live, that means different things.

Just think about it, and be careful, but be as bold as you may be, as well. Otherwise, none of the rest of us will have: 1. a good example, 2. a prime example.

This selling of Michigan’s assets is being felt in decreased revenues in State coffers and rising unemployment locally.

You… maybe do or do not realize, the… the raw value of the stage of Michigan. A lot of Michiganders simply -do not- realize it…

*Shrug* I’ve been growing up around either nincompoops or half-such as most of you my whole life; you’ve all, always treated Michigan like the back-burner lost sentiment of something American either never amounted to be or was running and screaming and denying itself from being.

You know how I spent the last two weeks?

Somewhere between machining steel-cadmium parts and tanning hides. Somewhere between watching videos and design EGA-legacy video-games. Somewhere between scripting my life grandly and trying most vainly to get a single, straight word in edgewise.

I live, my whole life this way. I don’t get your problem, doc. I really, ****ing, don’t. People who have alllllll these resources, and sit there and say “no, no i don’t! i’m poor”, and I sit here and have, literally, nothing, and these people have at LEAST $10,000, enough to start an entire business for a YEAR — they sit there and weep about their loss of the entire American dream.

And they haven’t even been Michigan, yet. And they’re weeping they’re not American.

*Shrug!!!!!!*

I have the fears that are being cultivated intentionally by our leaders about the potential threat of terrorism. I am not afraid of being blown up in an airplane but that we are spending billions to protect ourselves and very little to understand the conditions in the world that have made some persons so angry that they would blow themselves up and others with them at our expense. I fear that we are using fear to keep us from paying attention to troubling domestic issues and to justify full funding for our military industrial complex. I am afraid that we have stopped listening to the moral sensibilities of more conservative cultures, we have stopped caring about the rights of others as long as we can continue to exploit their resources for our benefit, we have allowed politically displaced persons to continue to fester their sores in abject poverty, we exploit religion’s extremists by giving them disproportionate air time when the vast majority in most of the world’s religious communities have more in common than we have have different.

I have hopes because there still are wonderful Americans giving sacrificially of their time and resources to feed the hungry, combat AIDS, eliminate preventable childhood disease, and build bridges of understanding. I pray, “God, help me to be one too.”

Let’s keep hoping for a great year in 2008 Dan but also live and lead in tangible and concrete ways away from our well considered fears and in the direction of concrete, measurable, and hoped for solutions. I want to hope not because I have chosen to ignore fear but because I am doing something tangible about removing the grounds for fear.

Sincerely,

Glenn Wagner

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Comment by danmulhern
2007-12-19 00:47:23
Glenn,
You are a marvelous thinker and writer and I always get a little excited when my email tells me that you have weighed in.
Would it be absurd for me to say that maybe we’re not so far apart? (There were a lot of “but’s” in your message that suggested we are.)
Perhaps an adult hope-at-Christmas time is not about what’s to be received, but is instead a confident hope in what we get to give. It’s not a hope for Christmas toys, but for peace and justice and freedom and opportunity. Perhaps if we believed in a world without terror, in a world that is committed to sustainability, in a world where we diligently work to uplift people and create opportunity, AND we work to achieve that through our own actions, then we can claim some of the hope and excitement and resilience that is Jack’s at Christmas time.
I don’t need to tell you, my friend in the ministry, that Jesus said we should accept the kingdom “like children.” Perhaps we ought to claim some aspect of victory, and neither be weighed down by all our personal angst - about work, about shopping, about our children and aging parents, and our own aging selves; nor weighed down by poverty, injustice, and war. But instead, we should, as you point out so powerfully “be the change we hope to see” and work for it. Yet claim it -as the way things can be, the way some day beyond our life times they will be. And take some genuine joy in it.
That’s my claim, Glenn.
Are the rumors true that you now have a church in the Lansing area? I and other bloggers might wish to know just where!
Peace,
Dan

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Comment by Nancy
2007-12-17 18:24:11
Dan, Thank you for your message reminding us of the criticalness of a positive attitude this time of year, and throughout the coming year. I pondered your message as I went about today’s activities. It occurred to me that perhaps 2 examples of influential individuals who found within themselves a positive attitude that changed the world would be Ghandi and Mandela. Both these men found hope, a positive vision, and the will to go on and to speak out when they were in impossible situations, when their days must have seemed hopeless. Surely they were unconsciously competent at being hopeful.

Glenn Wagner’s comments so clearly articulate our fears as adults who see our current reality, and the hope that we each must carry in our hearts and minds each day.

Thank you for reminding us of the importance to focus on hope in order to lead our lives, families, communities, state, nation and world in these difficult times.

Take care and be well
Nancy

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Comment by GAPetrie
2007-12-19 17:37:06
I love the look of this website this season. You’ve shown that you’re here to update not only the content: the environment as well.

This draws a parallel… at least for me… to a question: are you there to be part of changes in the environments of those who follow you, as strongly as you are there to propose new contents to your followers’ minds, mentalities, proselitisations, doctrines, planalities, and so on?

I mean, — IF — a follower really wanted to see a dramatic and drastic change in their environment that had more to do with YOU than with THEM, would that change be actually practical and working? That’s a very strong question!

I think with a website change like this, which you must have “OK’d”, I’m sure there’s some miniscule chance that you’re perhaps becoming the sort of person who scrapes salt with the rest of the earth, trades dirt with the ebb of the tide, makes comeliness with the rake and flow of the vesperous exchange of time and age in any human life… who’s really to say? Who thinks they’re authoritarian enough to demand that some predefined boundary be enough in value in the lives of those lives rescinded that it should overshadow every attempt ever made to simply be a human being and accept (*gulp*) INDETERMINISM and take what amounts to a leap of faith in creating or casting a future role?

Roles. *pshaw*

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—Jim Kouzes, coauthor of
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Recent Comments:
GAPetrie: I love the look of this website this season. You’ve shown that you’re here to update not only the content:…
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This draws a parallel… at least for me… to a question: are you there to be part of changes in the environments of those who follow you, as strongly as you are there to propose new contents to your followers’ minds, mentalities, proselitisations, doctrines, planalities, and so on?

I mean, — IF — a follower really wanted to see a dramatic and drastic change in their environment that had more to do with YOU than with THEM, would that change be actually practical and working? That’s a very strong question!

I think with a website change like this, which you must have “OK’d”, I’m sure there’s some miniscule chance that you’re perhaps becoming the sort of person who scrapes salt with the rest of the earth, trades dirt with the ebb of the tide, makes comeliness with the rake and flow of the vesperous exchange of time and age in any human life… who’s really to say? Who thinks they’re authoritarian enough to demand that some predefined boundary be enough in value in the lives of those lives rescinded that it should overshadow every attempt ever made to simply be a human being and accept (*gulp*) INDETERMINISM and take what amounts to a leap of faith in creating or casting a future role?

Roles. *pshaw*

Glenn Wagner’s comments so clearly articulate our fears as adults who see our current reality, and the hope that we each must carry in our hearts and minds each day.

Thank you for reminding us of the importance to focus on hope in order to lead our lives, families, communities, state, nation and world in these difficult times.

Take care and be well
Nancy

Thank you for the message of hope. Life is short. How we choose to focus our energies is important.

Another key ingredient in hope for me is leadership. I need more to sustain my hope than a simple attitude adjustment. What worked for me to get me excited about Christmas as a child no longer has the same power for me when it applies to life.

I would be more hopeful if I got the sense that leaders were hearing the real and wide spread anxieties of people and developing common sense solutions for our fears that are grounded in real facts on the ground around us.

I am afraid for example of the accumulating impact of escalating health care costs and the impact of the rising tide of the uninsured in this country. Rising health care costs have a negative impact on business. Many businesses are choosing either to cut costly benefits or outsource to places where workers are not able to organize for needed benefits. I am hopeful that thoughtful politicians are working with citizens, doctors, insurers, litigants, patients, and providers to offer affordable health care for all of us. In the mean time I have hope because I know there are people still concerned to provide adequate health care for the poor even though the price tag of compassion in an economy of rising unemployment is rising.

I am fearful of the impact on the world of rising energy costs and diminishing supplies. I am hopeful that thoughtful people with the power to make prudent decisions are making the development of alternatives a national and local long-term priority even when that priority may run contrary at the moment to certain well funded corporate self-interests. I am hopeful that politicians won’t be bought by special interests at the expense of their own people. In the meantime I have hope because I am doing what I can to be more energy efficient and conscious of my own consumption.

I worry about the “cheap leadership” that exists in our world where strident political or religious wannabes use polarization techniques to galvanize their base of support at the expense of vulnerable minorities and civil decency. I have hope that the silent middle majority will take a stand for policies that benefit the common good regardless of race, religion, gender, economics or political persuasion. I am hopeful as I know that there are persons who are actively working to build those bridges of reconciliation, tolerance, and understanding and Lord, help me to be one too.

I have worries about the long term impact of outsourcing American jobs and technology to cheaper overseas labor markets for the sake of short term profits. This selling of Michigan’s assets is being felt in decreased revenues in State coffers and rising unemployment locally. I have hopes that leaders here will act intentionally to help Michigan cut our own overhead costs by: making sprawl more difficult, making urban redevelopment more attractive, giving tax incentives for structural consolidation of Michigan’s many redundant governmental bodies. In order to compete and to develop a climate attractive to outside investement I believe we need to wake up to the fact that we can no longer afford the same overhead costs we had when the economy was flush. I have hopes that Michigan will encourage entrepeneurs and the kind of scientific innovation that will help Michigan produce the local jobs that will help us to compete in the new global marketplace. In the meantime I will do my part to encourage this hope by supporting Michigan based enterprises with my own patronage.

I have the fears that are being cultivated intentionally by our leaders about the potential threat of terrorism. I am not afraid of being blown up in an airplane but that we are spending billions to protect ourselves and very little to understand the conditions in the world that have made some persons so angry that they would blow themselves up and others with them at our expense. I fear that we are using fear to keep us from paying attention to troubling domestic issues and to justify full funding for our military industrial complex. I am afraid that we have stopped listening to the moral sensibilities of more conservative cultures, we have stopped caring about the rights of others as long as we can continue to exploit their resources for our benefit, we have allowed politically displaced persons to continue to fester their sores in abject poverty, we exploit religion’s extremists by giving them disproportionate air time when the vast majority in most of the world’s religious communities have more in common than we have have different.

I have hopes because there still are wonderful Americans giving sacrificially of their time and resources to feed the hungry, combat AIDS, eliminate preventable childhood disease, and build bridges of understanding. I pray, “God, help me to be one too.”

Let’s keep hoping for a great year in 2008 Dan but also live and lead in tangible and concrete ways away from our well considered fears and in the direction of concrete, measurable, and hoped for solutions. I want to hope not because I have chosen to ignore fear but because I am doing something tangible about removing the grounds for fear.

Sincerely,

Glenn Wagner

They ran, they screamed, they did crafts, they decorated cookies, they lovingly terrorized our cat, they sang and danced, they became again, for a time, sisters (and one brother)through a shared heritage. Just before goodbyes they crowded together and filled our staircase almost to the top so that we could have a picture of them all. Every face, and every smile, spoke of hope and promise and unlimited optimism.

And every day is Christmas. And at bedtime Maggie said, “Daddy, I like it when you laugh. You should do it more.” And she didn’t see the tear as I turned off the light and closed the door.

I enjoyed today’s newsletter as it hit right home on a topic my father and I have been discussing for the past few days.

I thought about being ten years old again and I remember the excitement and fascination I had with the holiday season. Every day was filled with magic and mystery, wondering what might be around the corner at the end of the month.

Today I am 25 and it does not feel the same. I do not think it is just because I perceive everything as someone more mature fifteen years later. I started thinking about what changed: after my mother passed away from a long battle with cancer, our family dynamic completely changed. In addition, I have many duties now to think about that I did not when I was ten. For example, I am gearing up for my last two graduate finals, three hours each, and scheduled for seven days prior to what has always been my favorite holiday. It is hard to think of much else now.

The things I have described happened to all of us when we finally grew up. We gained “real world” responsibilities - our minds clouded with thoughts of providing for our families or ourselves; we’ve lost loved ones; and if we are not careful, the magic of the season is lost.

I have always cherished this season and the time spent with my friends and loved ones, but as circumstances change, I am learning to celebrate it in different ways. Here’s to a renewed “unconscious competency” for hopefulness.

Cheers.

John Arenz

Alan Greenspan spoke of the traumatized worker, the person who is so beaten down, or resigned to lower pay and fewer benefits, that they do not expect to find a way to economically better themselves. This developed psychological characteristic is a qualitative indicator, or factor in controlling, or limiting inflation. That is people, who are beaten down on their expectations (sense or competence at being hopeful) do not actively look for better paying jobs, and therefore are not a force to drive up wages and benefits.

Oddly, some think this is good for the economy, but the lack of hope to find a better one self economically has to depress an economy.

Hopefulness, like many human behaviors and attributes can be molded or damaged. We have a need, for our survival, and the more significantly the survival of a life with human attributes, a need to understand and to identify the people who traumatize the human will to improve our lives.

There is essentially an industry for this brutalization of human will, which contains the capacity for hope. The think tanks which mangle reason, the lobbyists who argue that costs can only be contained by eliminating corporate responsibility, the select who fund these degrading enterprises.

Mark John Hunter
Alpena, Michigan