Dale Carnegie said decades ago that we shouldn’t condemn, criticize, or complain. Unfortunately, now it’s worse than ever. Everyone wants to be a Don-Imus-Don-Rickles-Simon-Cowell critic like Sue Sylvester in Glee, tearing down others for the thrill of it.
Quick: What do Jay Leno, Goldman Sachs, Tim Tebow, and Toyota have in common? Not sure? If Tiger Woods were added to the list, you’d guess that the one thing in common is that virtually everyone hates them.
If you trust the current mood of the media, you’d know that these once-upon-a-time good guys and good organizations have become downright evil with a capital E.
Jay Leno was the guy who stole Conan’s job, right? Didn’t Goldman Sachs screw AIG and the government by making so much money after being “saved” by the Federal Government and we, the taxpayers. Tim Tebow was the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback for Florida who led them to two National Championship but now is an over-rated-crybaby-not-ready-for-the-pros-goody-two-shoes-pro-life-possible-virgin who just had the audacity to be in a “pro-life” commercial displayed on the Superbowl. Heaven forbid that we had to see a commercial of a man and his mother in between the men’s underwear, beer-guzzling, and Doritos-chomping funfest.
Toyota was the once-superior car company that kicked the American car companies’ behinds and made the greenest vehicles possible but now obviously wants to kill all of its customers. And Tiger? Well, I won’t condone his fooling-around-and-trying-to-hide-it lifestyle but I’m not his wife and neither are you. Who ever made him the invincible-commercial-touting-best-guy-ever superstar anyways? The media, that’s who: the same bunch of 24-hour-TV channels, newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites that have tried and convicted Woods as the worst-ever-husband on the planet, a sick sex offender.
Let me throw in one more for good measure, but this successful man has some defenders left. But if you listened to the conservative-Republican blogosphere, you’d think Barack Obama is a Muslim-nearly-alien-not-born-here-anti-Israel-anti-capitalist-Socialist-radical who wants to destroy this country. I’ve heard and read far worse about him. I won’t say I’m a big fan of Obama’s policies and have been critical of a lot of what he has done in his first year of office. Still, I don’t think he’s the second coming of the devil. And neither is Tiger or Jay or Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, or Tim Tebow or Toyota.
Can’t anyone stick up for successful people? Do they all have to be taken down like mud wrestlers in a barroom brawl so that others can feel better about themselves?
What did Jay Leno do but agree to a show at 10 pm, giving Conan O’Brien a chance to take over the Tonight Show? I didn’t think the Leno show was that bad and actually watched it instead of all the police-lawyer-CSI shows on other networks. I actually believe the show could have worked if it was made into a more original comedy hour and given some more time to catch on. But the critics and then the local TV news departments convinced NBC that the Jay Leno Show was simply the worst show in the history of TV. So don’t blame Jay. Blame NBC and its higher-ups for this PR fiasco.
Goldman Sachs? They were and still are simply the best, most successful financial company in the world. Why shouldn’t they have negotiated the best deal for themselves with Paulsen and the government and taken advantage of AIG and the stupidity of others? If the U.S. government got screwed, be angry at the Fed and the Treasury for “giving away the store,” so to speak. Goldman is a public company that’s supposed to make as much as it can for its managers, employees, and shareholders. Would Goldman have been more popular if it was as poorly run as Bear Stearns or as stupid as Washington Mutual? Of course, it wouldn’t be here if it was.
Look, I have to admit I’m gloating a little that Toyota and not GM or Chrysler is going through grief for a change. Its leaders took some gambles and made some questionable decisions and now they’re paying the price in bad publicity. But Toyota’s cars are probably no less safe than Ford’s or Hyundai’s or Mercedes. And yet, I have to wonder why, in a world finally worried about car safety, that Volvo, with its pristine reputation as maker of the safest car in the world, was peddled from Ford to a Chinese manufacturer, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. I’m willing to make a bet that Toyota, not Volvo, will someday be back with a vengeance and known as a high-quality-car-manufacturer again.
I don’t care that the National Organization for Women can’t stand Tim Tebow or his mother for being thankful that she didn’t toss him into the fetal trash. I like Tim Tebow. He was lucky to be born because his mother didn’t listen to doctors who suggested abortion when she was ill. He’s not perfect but he seems to be a good guy who gives the most effort he can, trusts his teammates, is a natural leader, cares about kids with cancer (he sent a wonderful note and his signed photo to Noah) and spoke at a Florida high school kid’s funeral (someone who idolized Tim and died in a high school football game.) Everyone seems to be picking on Tim, even the satirical company, Despair, Inc. who put his photo in its Bittnerness poster. So what if Tebow cried when he lost to Alabama (how silly, the blogosphere wrote) and might not be a great pro football quarterback? I sure wish the Lions would draft him in the later rounds. I think he would at least be great on the sidelines and a good backup to Matt Stafford. Yet, his bad press keeps spreading and the scouts who rate passing style, speed, and accuracy give Tim very little chance to succeed. I hope he proves them all dead wrong.
Dale Carnegie said decades ago that we shouldn’t condemn, criticize, or complain. Unfortunately, now it’s worse than ever. Everyone wants to be a Don-Imus-Don-Rickles-Simon-Cowell critic like Sue Sylvester in Glee, tearing down others for the thrill of it.
I’d like these self-proclaimed critics to shut up or else give us a chance to give them some of their own medicine. A famous-for-fifteen-minutes man named Rodney King once asked credulously, “Can’t we all get along?” Heck, even Don Rickles once said, “If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn't be funny.”
Seth Godin is a renowned author, marketing expert, influential business blogger, and author of the new Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Do you remember the old American dream?
It struck a chord with millions of people (in the United States and in the rest of the world, too.) Here’s how it goes:
Keep your head down
Follow instructions
Show up on time
Work hard
Suck it up
…you will be rewarded.
As we’ve seen, that dream is over.
The new American Dream, though, the one that markets around the world are embracing as fast as they can, is this:
Be remarkable
Be generous
Create art
Make judgment calls
Connect people and ideas
…and we have no choice but to reward you.
Frank Costanza: “Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.” Cosmo Kramer: “What happened to the doll?” Frank Costanza: “It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!” Kramer: “That must have been some doll.” Frank Costanza: “She was.” (from the Seinfeld episode, “The Strike,” December 18, 1997)
Twelve years after the airing of the Seinfeld classic, “The Strike,” there is still a sanctuary in the world out there. If you’re tired of fighting with so many others in long lines at the mall or the local Walmart to find that obscure but desperately-needed Zhu Zhu pet and then find out, after hours of searching, that it’s sold out. If you’re worn out, searching on the Internet, first to see what a Zhu Zhu pet is, then realizing there is no way you’ll get one in time for the holidays….and then you wonder and wonder, “how did it ever get this way?” You ask yourself, “Isn’t there a holiday somewhere out there that doesn’t involve toys or gifts or celebrations?”
Yes, people, if you seek it, it will come. Just go to www.festivusbook.com or www.festivuspoles.com or search in that modern-day-encyclopedia-Brittanica (without the brittanica) called Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/festivus) and you will find solace. Yes, the holiday of Festivus is growing in popularity, more every year since Seinfeld went off the air and then played endlessly on reruns everywhere. Festivus has a book written all about it (Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us, Allen Salkine) that illuminates and sanctifies this glorious time of year in which all of your grievances can finally be aired.
Festivus, if you are one of those anti-Seinfeld-ites, is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23rd, created by writer Dan O’Keefe and introduced by scriptwriter and son, Daniel, on December 18, 1997 in the episode, “The Strike.” According to father O’Keefe, the name Festivus “just popped into my head,” (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus), in February, 1965, as a celebration of his first date with his future wife, Deborah.
As written on Seinfeld, the holiday includes such sacred practices as the “Airing of Grievances,” which occurs during the Festivus meal, a time when each participant is expected to tell everyone else all the ways the people at the table have disappointed him or her over the past year (kind of like a reverse atonement.) After the meal, “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned.
Of course, the original holiday according to father Dan O’Keefe in his landmark book, The Real Festivus, features more “peculiar” practices, including the traditional raising of the Festivus pole, available for purchase at www.festivuspoles.com. These Festivus poles are made of aluminum, extruded alloy, milled finish, 1-1/2” schedule 40 pipe size, and offered in two sizes, a 6-foot floor model (only $39 plus shipping,) and a 2-foot-8-inch table top model (only $31 plus shipping.) These poles are, according to the website, “collapsible for easy storage for your crawlspace,” 100% recyclable, and incredibly, 100% domestically produced and manufactured.
Take that, China. There are many high quality goods still manufactured in the good old USA.
Myths about Festivus? No, we are not expected to give donations to fake charities as demonstrated in the Seinfeld episode when George Kostanza created a fake charity called the Human Fund (with its slogan, “Money for People”) rather than giving real office Christmas presents. After George’s boss, Mr. Kruger, had second thoughts about his $20,000 corporate donation to the Human Fund, George admitted he concocted the Human Fund because he feared persecution because he celebrated Festivus.
And no, Festivus does not condone going on strike for 12 years against your employer (in this case, Kramer at H&H Bagels,) and then returning to work and wanting time off to celebrate Festivus and going back on strike when the boss says no. And in no way, is carrying a sign reading “Festivus yes! Bagels no!” acceptable behavior during the holiday. But yes, there are Festivus miracles as in this scene from Seinfeld:
Sleazy Guy: “Hello again, Miss Benes.”
Elaine Benes: “What are you doing here?”
Sleazy Guy: “Damndest thing. Me and Charlie were calling to ask you out, and, uh, we got this bagel place.”
Cosmo Kramer: “I told them I was just about to see you. It’s a Festivus Miracle!”
Yes, the Festivus holiday is heart-warming, as related in the Festivus Miracle true-story in 2000 when Brian Billick, coach of the Baltimore Ravens, banned his players from using the word, “playoffs,” during the season so they could focus on each game played and not look ahead. So the players substituted the term “festivus” for playoffs and “Festivus Maximus” for the Super Bowl, which may have helped them actually win the Festivus Maximus that year, which was truly a Festivus miracle.
Or how about when students Mike and Matt Tennenhouse erected a Festivus pole (the handle of a pool cleaner) in the rotunda of the Illinois Capitol building in 2008, as they were simply “airing grievances” on behalf of the people of Illinois against Governor Rod Blagojevich. This may have been the final straw that pushed the state to eventually impeach the sleazy governor, which was another Festivus miracle, indeed!
And I think that is the crux of the greatness of the holiday. Instead of standing in line and spending hundreds of dollars in crappy economic times on useless gifts for people who don’t really want them anyways; why not air your grievances instead? And that’s what I just plan on doing during this time of “happy holidays” Hanukkah (or Chanukkah), Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
Here is my top ten 2009 Grievance List in no particular order:
10. Hey, what about those Detroit Lions, this year improving to two big wins instead of 0?
9. Do we have to get more doses of Kwame Kilpatrick? I thought that guy had floated away in the last Thanksgiving Parade, stuffed in the Soupy Sales balloon. (Naw, that was Balloon Boy, after his dad was humiliated by the public ridicule and wanted to dump his son once and for all.)
8. This Senate health care bill, loaded with 2074 pages of legalese, wasted money, new rules and regulations, paybacks to states like Nebraska to get Senator Nelson’s vote, kickbacks to drug companies, new taxes and everything but logical cost reductions like state-to-state competition and tort reform. This bill can give you heart palpitations, acid reflux, and need for psychological counseling, all of which are out of network in my 39% increased 2010 health insurance plan.
7. It was bad enough to read before about the sainted athlete of the decade, Tiger Woods, but it’s now even worse to hear him catcalled and roasted as if he were the second coming of the devil. Frank Rich reminds us that Fortune Magazine named Enron America’s Most Innovative Company 6 years in a row. This obsession to deify and then crucify celebrities, companies, politicians, and athletes is downright sickening.
6. By the way, I haven’t heard about Michael Jackson for an hour and a half (yes, he’s in every magazine, newspaper, and website’s 2009 reviews and best-of-worst-of-top-makers-etc-etc.)
5. Why-oh-why do I have to worry about global warming when even worried-about-warming and scientifically astute professor Bernd Heinrich (“Clear-Cutting the Truth about Trees,” New York Times, Dec. 19, 2009) calls the Kyoto Protocol “horrifying” and writes that carbon offsets and “cap-and-trade” systems create “huge economic pressure for ecocide?”
4. What’s a Zhu Zhu pet anyways? I still have no clue.
3. People who complain about everything including the media, Zhu Zhu pets, and health care “reform” (woops; can I take this one back?)
2. That David Letterman can cheat on his wife by having “relations” with his staffers and still have the chutzpah to do a Top Ten List everyday, consistently making fun of Tiger Woods.
1. You know, I’m starting to get sick of Seinfeld melding into Curb Your Enthusiasm and all those stinking reruns and how all of it makes me feel anxious, worried, and mildly depressed.
Yeah, maybe it’s better to be artificially cheerful during the holidays, even in the midst of high unemployment, massive debts, and the media’s overkill of stupid news stories that have no place in the news.
There is one sure way to be cheerful and that’s not to watch the 3 minute YouTube video about Festivus (http://www.festivuspoles.com/pages/festivus/Video.htm.) It’s instead getting up and singing a rousing chorus of Joel Kopischke’s Oh Festivus (sung to the booming chorus of “Oh Canada”) and picturing yourself nailing it in front of 20,000 screaming Toronto Maple Leaf fans.
Oh Festivus
Your praises now we sing
For the rest of us
There will be no re-gifting
Thy shining pole of aluminum
Completely tinsel-free
We air grievances oh Festivus
Can you spare a square for me?
Thy feats of strength
Are must-see TV
Frank Costanza, we’ll pin you first,
you’ll see, Oh Festivus,
You are spongeworthy.
Then, picture the Toronto mob coming after you and wrestling you to the ground, which would officially terminate the Festivus celebration for the year.
Yet, in your heart, you know Festivus will be back, only one year away. So put your pole back in your crawlspace and wait like the rest of us.
You can see on TV that there are an awful lot of meshugena celebrities living large in the U.S. but there are way more people, just hoping to survive the winter. It’s the time of year to stop focusing on Tiger and Kwame and instead turn this mishigoss into mitzvahs.
Just a year ago, everyone thought that Tiger Woods was not just a heckuva good golfer but a “good” guy as well. And Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, in large part because he was determined to finally bring our troops home after years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What a change a year makes. Media icons Tiger and Barack are featured together on the cover of Golf Digest this month but both are making headlines two different ways, Obama by deciding to add 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan for 18 months and Tiger by bashing his car into a tree on his way to his mistress and then a dozen other women claiming their piece of the Tiger-temptress media frenzy. There’s sure no loss of mishigoss these days.
Here in Detroit, we have plenty of mishigoss masquerading as chutzpah. Kwame is back in town, back in court, just in time to learn that Detroit is again first and worst in the United States. The students of the Detroit Public Schools posted the worst scores in the 40-year history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress math tests. With role models like Kwame, is anyone surprised?
So can you guess who said this? “I embarrassed her, I cheated on her, I lied to her, and I put her through Hell…I caused her an incredible amount of pain.” If you guessed Tiger, you’d be wrong. Yes, Kwame continues to embarrass himself and the City of Detroit. While we lose really “good” guys like ex-Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson, who donated his time and money to charities and was a role model for lots of young people, we can’t completely lose Kwame. No matter how much he wants to leave us, the Detroit courts keep pulling him back to pay off the money he owes Detroit while he gets in more hot water in the press.
Meanwhile, back in D.C., 2000 pages of health care “reform” are bantered around and discussed by Democratic senators, deciding public option or no public option, and how they can get 60 senators to sign off on even more government bureaucracy. And in the White House, Obama is considering using $200 billion of repayed Tarp funds from banks to come up with more spending plans to get small business to increase hiring…code word…jobs. Yet, the U.S. debt clock has surpassed $12 trillion and the annual deficit has ballooned past $1.5 trillion. I've read some numbers that say if you take into account the total amount of personal debt and unfunded liabilities such as Social Security, the U.S. is leveraged to more than 350% to GDP. But if you don’t worry about budgets or sanity, it must be fun to spend billions of dollars on anything you feel like. It’s like having an unlimited equity line, with no limits and no payback dates.
Unfortunately, like so many others, I just got a friendly letter by my non-local Citibank office, stating that though I have never missed a payment, I can no longer borrow anything from my home equity line because my home is not worth enough to borrow against. A few years ago, I could spend like Obama if I wanted on new cars, carpeting, a new basement, an HDTV, all because my home was worth something more than I owed on it.
Those days are gone, unless you’re the good old USA and China is your godfather. Dubai, Spain, and Greece aren’t so fortunate, as banks are starting to pull the plugs on their lines of credit. And if you think 2010 is going to be another upward ride in the stock market and we won’t have some unexpected credit debacles, think again. Some more financial mishigoss is just over the horizon.
I keep thinking, however, why worry about the next year, a few weeks before this one ends? Instead, it’s better to think about helping those in need, all of those charities and their good works, amidst the desperation they are facing, raising money in such dire times. It’s better to be thankful and think about two seventh graders who were touched by the story of Noah and sold donuts to raise $500 to the University of Michigan’s Cancer center. It’s a lot more hopeful to read that the University of Michigan named the Neuroblastoma Research Fund after Noah and is setting up a web page that will be dedicated to the “Power of Noah” that will have info about Neuroblastoma, Noah’s story, and ways to donate to the research fund online.
It’s more humbling to think about a mother preparing her son for his passing and teaching him not to be scared. “I got to hold his hand,” Diana wrote on her Carepages website, “and be right there with him when he passed away. It was peaceful and the second most powerful moment of my life. The first was the day he was born….The Power of Noah lives on in each one of us.”
So instead of worrying about all the mishigoss in Detroit and DC, think about kids without long to live and donate to the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital or Make-A-Wish with money or toys or books. Donate to the Salvation Army or give your time to do a mitzvah for someone else. If you’re Jewish, give to others in the Detroit area on Mitzvah Day, December 25th, helping others to have a better Christmas.
The last two years, Judy and I donated our time to help the homeless with food and clothes in Detroit and Pontiac and I know I felt a lot better doing that than sitting home in my pajamas and watching TV. Yes, there’s a lot that I have taped on my DVR that I have to catch up on in my time off. But there are a lot more important things than watching TV.
You can see on TV that there are an awful lot of meshugena celebrities living large in the U.S. but there are way more people, just hoping to survive the winter. It’s the time of year to stop focusing on Tiger and Kwame and instead turn this mishigoss into mitzvahs.
This is the time of year to take a few minutes to think of others. This is the right time of year to do a little mitzvah.
Diana, Scott, and the Biorkman family were transformed by Noah’s life and though Diana said she felt “a peace that was very difficult to explain” after his death, surviving the coming years of loss and heartache will demand a super-human test of inner strength. Still, a few days after the death of her boy, she was simply thankful, still amazed at the miraculous life of her son.
Three weeks before Christmas, Diana Biorkman sent her “Final Noah Update” to her friends and family, summing up their early Christmas celebration and thanking her friends and family for their support in Noah’s final days.
December is the final month of the year and a difficult month for finalities. I couldn’t help but remember that on December 2nd, it had been 25 years since Judy’s beloved grandmother, Bubbe Belle, died suddenly, less than a month after our engagement. And it was less than three weeks until the birthday of my brother, two days before Christmas. If he hadn’t been in a car accident when he was 13, he probably would have been celebrating with us today.
Children are not meant to die young. When Judy and I went to Noah’s viewing, the casket was open so we could see Noah’s five-year-old body, peaceful, lying with his little bear, the stuffed animal that gave him so much comfort in his days of pain. During his funeral, as we listened to Diana’s moving speech about Noah’s life, my mind was transported back to interviewing Diana for a job at our company. She had just graduated from Michigan State University and had also worked for two years in the MSU key shop and so had some knowledge of our business as well as products we sold.
I still couldn’t forget a few years later when I got a call late in the afternoon, Diana’s voice quivering in fear, telling me about a near-fatal-car-accident she had just survived. We had rented a truck so she could travel with our Gardall rep, Mike Maxim, and filled it with Gardall fire safes. They spent two days traveling through the metro Detroit area in a truck with thousands of pounds of safes, demonstrating, promoting, and delivering safes to many of our customers. As they were driving on I-696, just over on the lane to their left, a sports car rammed into another car and suddenly slid underneath their truck. Mike, driving the rental truck, did every thing in his power to keep it from tipping over or hitting another car and having dozens of safes crashing onto the highway. Diana sounded dazed and amazed that somehow, Mike had brought the truck to the side of the highway and even though many safes fell and hit against the walls of the truck, the back overhead door didn’t open and no one, not even the sports car driver who caused the accident, was badly injured.
At the funeral, I realized that Diana was a survivor then and now. I didn’t know if an angel was looking over Diana and Mike on the day of the accident, keeping them and the other cars from the horror of death. But what I remember that day was an indelible gratitude that she was okay and that everyone else had been spared.
Mike quit the safe business a few months later and Diana began to sell doors instead of safes and then we hired Scott Biorkman from a door company to install them. It didn’t take them long before they dated and eventually married and were eventually blessed to have a baby named Noah, born on July 8, 2004. After Diana and Scott left the company, she stopped by periodically with her little baby to visit some of her IDN-ex-co-workers. But the day she brought Noah to work in March 2007 after doctors discovered Stage 4 Neuroblastoma in his little toddler-body, everything changed. We got involved by raising money to help with their health insurance expenses and then the doctors told Noah’s parents he only had a few months to live. That just meant Diana and Scott would search for another doctor with better answers which led to Dr. Yanik at U of M’s Mott Children’s Hospital whose experimental treatments brought remission in August that year. For over a year, it seemed as if Noah might actually have found a miracle remission but he suffered a relapse in September 2008 with lesions in his right arm and right leg and then went through six different trials to defeat his cancer. Everything was tried to beat the disease but eventually, after a storybook year of home runs and cards from all over the world, cancer eventually won, stopping a five-year-old boy’s life.
Diana, Scott, and the Biorkman family were transformed by Noah’s life and though Diana said she felt “a piece that was very difficult to explain” after his death, surviving the coming years of loss and heartache will demand a super-human test of inner strength. Still, a few days after the death of her boy, she was simply thankful, still amazed at the miraculous life of her son.
She wrote about the family Christmas that they chose to celebrate on November 8th, how Santa came to their house with two large sacks of presents which was filmed for Channel 4 News in Detroit. She wrote about the amazing flurry of Christmas cards sent from all over the world and how a few hundred cards a day turned into thousands of cards and presents from all over the world. Patty, Diana’s friend and “project coordinator,” brought dozens of presents daily from around the world for Noah to open. At first, he was overwhelmed by how many cards and presents he received and the flood of people who helped open them but soon “realized that they were all here for him.”
Diana listed some of the items Noah got: “a letter from President Obama, two letters from Governor Granholm, 10 United States flags flown for him from all over the world, medals of honor (including one man’s Bronze Star), honorary places in most of the military operations from special ops to Seabees in the navy, a bomb named after him, signed memorabilia…Over one million people thought of Noah and sent him a card.” They kept cards from each country, amazed that “a five year old could bring together not only the United States but people from all over the world.”
Most importantly, amidst all the hoopla of hundreds of post office boxes and the gifts and the donations and the hope and prayers displayed from children and adults everywhere, it still came down to the love between a child and his grandparents and his mother and father. “He was sweet and loving,” Diana wrote, “ready to go,” spending hours “saying goodbye to the people that made an impact on him.” “He would tell me,” she continued, “that he loved me whenever or wherever the thought occurred to him. He would yell it across the clinic, across the living room, or lying in bed with him.” Mother and son lived the lyrics to John Mayer’s song, Say, and its repeating lyrics, “Say what you need to say.” They had open dialogues “that not many people can actually say they have with another person, let alone a five year old.”
Her “little angel” changed all of their lives for the better and though Diana “misses him every day,” she knows she said everything and did everything she could. She knows that Scott and her family and friends gave and received all the love they had. So what else can you ask for? Diana wrote she had no “regrets or guilt,” no “what ifs or if only I had done that.”
At the viewing, Diana told Judy and me that the little angel ornament on the top of their Christmas tree vibrated the last few days of Noah’s life, but after he died, the shaking stopped. She believed with all of her heart that her little angel had actually become a real angel and was floating above them.
Who can say what is real or fantasy? Noah’s mother feels peace because her son had a wonderful life, filled with love and excitement and a home run hit just for him and an early Christmas with a special visit from Santa and cards and gifts from all over the world just for him. And his mother feels peace because she still feels Noah’s presence, alive in her soul.
During the viewing before his funeral, a special video was shown with photos of Noah from birth to just before his death, with the background song, “Hello Goodbye.”
And so I hold your hand in mine
For the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face
Heaven calls for you
Before it calls for me
When you get there save me a place
A place where I can share your smile
And I can hold you for more than just awhile
Noah, hello, good-bye
I’ll see you on the other side
Noah, sweet child of mine
I’ll see you on the other side
Whether you have nothing or a lot, be thankful that you live in a land in which dreams are possible, in which you can do more than dreading your future.
“Everyone—By which I mean ‘not you’—is getting rich off the Internet,” humor columnist Dave Barry wrote in the summer of 1999 (“Internet zillionaires realize American dream,” Eugene Register-Guard, August 16, 1999). “We are constantly seeing stories in the media,” he continued, “about young Internet entrepreneurs who look like they should be mowing lawns for spending money, except that they have the same net worth as Portugal…When we read about these spectacularly successful young people—who, through their boldness and vision, have realized the American Dream, and in so doing, have created the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen, thereby benefiting all of us—we cannot help but express our gratitude as follows: ‘I hope they get leprosy.’”
Well, Dave Barry soon found out that most of the Internet “zillionaires” of the boom years didn’t get leprosy but many of them did go broke or had to get real jobs at real companies in the years after the Internet bubble burst.
Many of us non-students can remember the lazy, hazy days of the last year of the last century when the economy seemed like it was meant to grow forever. This was before the panic of Y2K, the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble, before 9/11 and Katrina, before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, before the subprime and housing market collapses and the next rapid decline of the stock market. This was before the liquidation of Lehman Brothers, before the meltdowns of AIG and Fannie and Citibank, before the meteoric rise of China. This was before you could read books, magazines, and newspapers on your Kindle, before Madoff and the rescues of the banks and Freddie and GM and Chrysler with taxpayer dollars, before Tarp and the Stimulus plan, before the trillions of dollars the Treasury printed to pump up what’s left of the American economy.
Can anyone remember the American Dream of the last millennium, when a normal goal was to get a union job on a production line or go to college and become a professional something or other, when marrying in your 20s and having 2 kids, 2 cars, and a dog were worthy achievements? Before the last Great Depression, Herbert Hoover did not really call for a chicken in every pot but he did actually say, "the slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.” The motto today, on the other hand, might be an iPod or iPhone for every kid, an HDTV in every living room, or in California, Governor Schwarzenegger’s motto might be: “Pot for every cancer patient or at least every Hollywood celebrity.”
Today, so many in the Detroit area, even with our fledgling new film industry, don’t have much money for the finer things in life except the dreams of the good times of the past. Remember Hudson’s or Bob-Lo or Tiger Stadium or Crowley’s or even when the now-bargain-bought Silverdome displayed the sometimes-exciting Detroit Lions as well as the Pistons after Dave Bing left Detroit. Now, we pray for Mayor Bing to lead Detroit to some brighter future and just want to know now where in the world did Circuit City and Michigan National Bank disappear. We are left to wonder where our clothes and computers and TVs and even most of our cars are manufactured today, though we know most things sold in the US are probably not made in the United States anymore.
But this is the land we live in now; this is our land, this is our country. So what should we do about it besides worry? We can’t or shouldn’t spend all of our time focused on the fiscal nightmare of Detroit or the state of Michigan or California or the U.S. federal deficit for that matter. What can you do about it except twitter about it or put it on your Facebook page or blog about it when you get a chance?
Better yet, maybe you can do what 15-year-old Detroiter Trayveon McGuire does. A sophomore at Detroit’s Weston Preparatory Academy, he has amassed more than 1000 followers of Upfront News, a Twitter-based news outlet (“A visit on the other side of the tweet,” Amber Hunt, Detroit Free Press, November 29, 2009). Forget journalism school. McGuire monitors Web sites, wire services and TV news broadcasts and follows up on breaking headlines by attempting to verify the information. So when Tiger Woods got into an auto accident, Trayveon didn’t just accept the other news stories but instead found out Woods was being treated and released for injuries by calling the hospital directly.
Young people don’t just have to talk and gossip like our generation did. They can ask questions, find answers, follow up, and be inquisitive. Or even better, they can devote their time to giving, like 12-year-old Zach Bonner from Tampa, Florida, who said, “No matter how old or how young, how rich or how poor, you can always make a difference” (“Caring Kid Who Helps the Homeless,” www.beliefnet.com, 11/30/09). Zach began at 6, collecting bottled water for hurricane victims, and at 7, was filling backpacks with food and toys for homeless kids. Last year at 11, he made a 1200-mile “My House to the White House” walk to raise money to house homeless youth.” Why does he spend so much of his childhood years helping the homeless? Because, he says, “there are 1.3 million homeless kids in America” and “13 die each day on the street.”
In this post-bubble, post-financial-hurricane we live in, there are, tragically, too many people without jobs, especially in Detroit and in most of Michigan, and too many on the streets. Thankfully, there are kids and adults like Zach who know that their American dreams are to help make the lives of other kids and adults a lot better. Just ask Jorge Munoz, a school bus driver who was once an illegal immigrant from Columbia who became a US citizen in 1987 (“Feeding the Hungry,” www.beliefnet.com, 11/30/09). With what he has saved from his modest bus-driver salary, Jorge buys food, helps cook it and personally delivers it every day for the last five years, providing free meals to the hungry in Queens in New York City. Every single day, rain or snow, hot or cold, Munoz serves chicken and rice and hot chocolate and coffee to the poor from the back of his truck parked under an elevated subway stop.
So who says that the American dream is to be the next Kim Kardashian or any other talent-less celebrity followed by millions? I like to believe that the American dream is best achieved by a 3 foot tall 30-year-old man with short arms and mangled legs. Born with brittle bone disease, Sean Stephenson was supposed to die within 24 hours but after hundreds of fractures over his youth, he decided that he would teach others to love life amidst the pain (“Sean Stephenson’s Inspiring Voice,” Investor’s Business Daily, 11/27/2009). Now, he gives 40 to 50 talks a year for a minimum $10,000 per appearance, is a therapist, and has written four books including his newest, “Get off your ‘But:’ How to End Self-Sabotage and to Stand Up for Yourself.”
Stephenson said his “mission is to rid the world in my lifetime of insecurities.” He wants you to stop using crutches and to stop thinking “you’re not smart enough, rich enough, good-looking enough, thin enough” and stop using any of these as excuses “why you don’t have what you want.”
So if a 3 foot tall cripple can aspire to create a summer Confidence Camp to teach children self-esteem, why should any of us lack inspiration to make our own American Dreams come true? It doesn’t matter if American manufacturing is crippled or the economy weak or Detroit in the dumps or even if we just can’t seem to find a job anywhere. The American dream is meant to be just that, a dream, something we can live for or aspire towards.
12-year-old Zach, 15-year-old Trayveon, 30-year-old Sean, and 45-year-old Jorge are all examples of the American dream as they live without excuses while they help the homeless, report the news, inspire and teach others, and cook and deliver food with little money to those who have nothing.
Whether you have nothing or a lot, be thankful that you live in a land in which dreams are possible, in which you can do more than dreading your future. We have the opportunity to start today by doing something that moves us toward some small success. We can think of Zach or Jorge and do a little mitzvah for someone else and build upon that. Think of Jorge who works a regular job but makes sure his life is more than just a daily bus ride. Imagine what pain and discomfort Sean has to live with and yet how he manages to help others and create an incredibly successful life of money and mitzvahs and yet is still not satisfied. His dreams now include starting an orphanage called Adopt An Angel that would be based outside the U.S. in a developing country, "where we can show the power of what it's like to raise a child with a disability."
The American dream is whatever you make it. It’s working a boring job while you write or sing or play music on the side. It’s fund-raising for people who need help. It’s raising your voice and letting those in power know what you think. It’s being grateful and happy no matter what your livelihood is. It’s inspiring others with your words and your actions. It’s coming up with an idea that no one else has created, dreaming of what you can uniquely bring the world, and then taking a small step to making it happen.
You might not be inspired by exceptional people like Trayveon, Zach, Jorge, or Sean, wondering how you can really make a difference. But you can. It doesn’t matter what your age or race or physical capability is. The American dream is only measured by your heart, no one else’s.
You may never be a zillionaire but no one can tell you what your dream is and no one but you can take it away.
“Merry Christmas to you, Noah, a reminder of my past. When I was 7 years old, my best friend, Scott Mudrack, died of cancer. I was young and never got a chance to say goodbye. When I heard about you, my friend came to mind and I was touched by your story. I hope you read this and realize that me and many others will never forget you, and that there are a million people out around the world wishing you a Merry Christmas, even if they didn’t have time to make a card saying so. This time, I speak for everyone who couldn’t. You have a friend in all of us.” From a handwritten card from Robert Brooks
Since the day Noah Biorkman’s parents decided to bring an early Christmas to Noah because it was unlikely he would make it to December 25th, they felt a web of emotions. When friends asked if there was anything they could do to help their son celebrate, Diana and Scott asked people who cared about Noah simply to send him a Christmas card.
Then, no one could have predicted that a simple Christmas Cards for Noah Facebook page would unleash the avalanche of responses that it has. After dozens of Noah’s family and friends spent the last three weeks opening and reading and counting cards, there were few adjectives to explain the overwhelming flood of messages.
Over 100,000 wishes on Facebook and over one million Christmas cards have come from all over the world, from Texas and China, Tennessee and India, California and Israel, Japan and Great Britain, Ireland and the North Pole (yes, I guess there is one) in Canada. It was as if Santa himself had made Christmas special for Noah by delivering thousands and thousands of heartfelt wishes from children and parents and students and celebrities and politicians and athletes and soldiers in many different languages to a little boy and his family. The Biorkmans were unbelievably stunned by the tsunami of good wishes.
Judy and I volunteered to help the Saturday before Thanksgiving and joined about 15 others, all of us on a sunny November afternoon, sorting and counting and reading and deciding what to do next with each card. We witnessed boxes and boxes of still unopened mail and looked upon boxes of donated toys and books and blankets. I went through one box filled with over a thousand cards that I only got halfway through, reading notes from kids and teachers and nuns and parents and families, all signing and giving their good wishes to a boy that was, that afternoon, taking a long nap.
The Michigan vs. Ohio State football game was on upstairs but no one cared too much about football as they were opening the cards, even though every member of the U of M team had signed a football for Noah and gave him a Michigan jersey with his name sewn on it. Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, quarterback of the number-one-ranked Florida Gators, gave Noah a signed autograph and a jersey with his number and Noah’s name on it as well. There were signed baseballs, hockey sticks, pennants and photos with signatures of other teams as well.
Diana said that Noah had a lot of tumors on his body but that each day and each moment had been different and sometimes surprising. One day it looked like the end was near and the next day, Noah woke up, needing to pee and starving, asking for a big breakfast. His internal energy was hard to predict but the thankfulness he displayed to everyone for every gift was, according to the friends there, truly captivating and touching. He couldn’t believe everything he got while Diana was mystified at the responses. Yet, after three weeks of thousands of cards and gifts and the off-and-on, up-and-down health of Noah, she was clearly a little numb and just trying to deal with it and accept it all.
She showed us what she called the “cool box” which included jerseys and autographed photos and balls and charitable donations that Scott and she had to decide where to donate: maybe the U of M Mott Hospital or Make a Wish or maybe families who desperately needed money to care for their kids with cancer. She showed us a signed photo of Oprah with a note from her. Noah also received notes from Governor Granholm and Senator John Kerry and six American flags, one displayed on an American helicopter in Afghanistan on November 6th (she showed the photo of the flag and the name, Noah Biorkman, displayed on the helicopter.) I couldn’t keep track of all the amazing gifts that Noah received but it was hard to forget the signed personal letter from President Obama as well as a Medal of Honor that was given from a soldier with a note honoring Noah for his bravery.
After seeing all the notes and gifts from famous people, Judy asked if Noah received anything from Letterman or Leno and Diana surprisingly said that they just got something from Jay Leno the day before.
It’s easy to get excited when getting something from a famous person but when someone donates his entire coin collection or a medal or flag or just writes a personal note about how much they care, it is even more inspiring. To think that millions of people all over the world were touched enough to give of themselves heartfelt thoughts, greetings, prayers, good wishes, drawings, poems, and their blessings.
I was touched by, among other cards, a simple handwritten note from Robert Brooks and a simple wish on looseleaf paper with a red background that read: “Dear Noah, I hope you get better soon. I’m sorry you are sick. My name is Rockia. I am in the second grade at Old Redford Academy in Detroit. Sincerely yours, Rockia. Sincerely Rockia your friend. Get better Please, MayBe you will fill Better, I love you Noah. Please Get Better.” Next to the note, she drew a stick boy with red cheeks.
All I could think about after seeing so many cards from everywhere in the world was that here was a little second grade girl in Detroit, not too many miles away from Noah, pleading for him to get better. Amongst all of the greetings from Obama and Oprah and Governor Granholm and Leno and Tebow and soldiers and athletes was a simple wish from a second grade girl, one amongst a million wishes, but special in its own way.
The friends opening the cards shared stories from the last few weeks. They talked about how the outpouring of love and caring had renewed their faith in people. How could we not, I thought, have our hope renewed when witnessing such affection from so many strangers? A million wishes had come to South Lyon, Michigan, all with the hope of making Christmas special for a little boy who was facing his last moments of life.
A million wishes indelibly changed the lives of a boy and his mother and father and grandfather and grandmother and his friends. It made them realize that, as Robert Brooks said, they “had a friend in all of us.”
Noah died the day after the anniversary of the death of a beloved president who also died too young, 46 years earlier. According to Diana, Noah was not in pain. His family was with him at night and got to give him kisses and then they left. In the morning, Noah’s mother sat on the bed with her little boy and peacefully, he passed away.
Noah did not live until the actual day of Christmas but he was able to celebrate the holiday with Santa and his family and all of his friends, millions of them, from everywhere in the world.
Michiganders suffering from the GM-Chrysler-Lions-Wolverine blues desperately need help from anywhere we can get it.
The week that the University of Michigan Wolverines tries to break a five-game losing streak against the Ohio State Buckeyes is not the right week for the Boss to screw up states. It’s bad enough that the Wolverines have lost five Big Ten games in a row, most by big margins in the second half. It’s hurtful enough to Michigan that the Buckeyes won the Big Ten title by beating Penn State and then finding a way to beat Iowa in overtime after losing two games earlier in the year.
Is it not enough that Michigan’s official unemployment statistics are over 15% while the real (whisper) number including those who gave up and part-timers wanting full-time work is closer to 25%? How about this? Over 20% (2.2 million Michigan residents) are now receiving some form of government assistance (welfare, food stamps, Medicaid) according to the Department of Human Services (“A state in free fall grapples with change,” Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press, Nov. 15, 2009, 29A).
And now this: Bruce Springsteen, the legendary 60-year-old rock star, yells out to an adoring Michigan crowd at the Palace on Friday the 13th: “Hello OHIO!” and then continues to call the Auburn Hills faithful “Ohio” for the first 30 minutes until guitarist Steven Van Zandt whispers in his ear, “Hey boss, we’re not in Ohio anymore.” Ouch!
How many times has Bruce been here? I saw him three times myself, first in 1975 in the Detroit Palace, then in Ann Arbor in the 80s and then 2007 at the Auburn Hills Palace. Okay, maybe I’m being too sensitive. I know it’s only a simple mistake of mistaken state identities from a tired rock star, maybe in the beginning phase of Alzheimer’s or Dementia. But give me a break!
I mean, really, give us a break! Give everyone in this suffering state something to cheer about, maybe Ford Motor, maybe the MSU basketball Spartans, maybe the Red Wings with one last gasp for a championship. Michiganders suffering from the GM-Chrysler-Lions-Wolverine blues desperately need help from anywhere we can get it.
I am looking upward to the Wizard of M and that I mean Bo, yes Bo Schembechler. I still imagine his legendary words, now needed more than ever: “Dammit, we’re Michigan!”
Yes, one more time, with feeling: “We’re Michigan!”
Take that, Woody, wherever you are.
Seven weeks before Christmas, a new movie version of A Christmas Carol, a computer-animated feature starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge, arrived in theatres nationwide. But a modern day Christmas carol was taking place in South Lyon, Michigan, in the home of a five-year-old boy in hospice, with a very short time to live.
After a tear-filled Halloween weekend, Noah Biorkman’s parents, Diana and Scott, decided that instead of waiting for Noah to die without him celebrating Christmas, they would bring the holiday to him early in November. They would put up a Christmas tree and called the family to gather soon and asked their friends to send their son a Christmas card. A friend of theirs created a Facebook page called “Christmas Cards for Noah Biorkman,” with this description, “Christmas will come early for a five year old Michigan boy this year. Noah Biorkman is battling cancer and is not expected to live much longer. Noah's family is celebrating Christmas next weekend (November 13th and 14th) and Noah loves Christmas cards. Noah's mom is asking for Christmas cards.” Linda Lee from a local radio station, WYCD, put a link to Noah’s carepage site and was told by Scott and Diana that they wanted the world to know about pediatric cancer and specifically about Neuroblastoma cancer which had afflicted Noah.
The Tuesday after, Diana wrote of the “Inspiration of One Little Man,” that “Scott and I are shocked at the outpouring of love, prayers, support, and compassion that all of you have shown over the past four days alone.” They received 64 Christmas cards and one package and the Post Office supervisor, Sandy, told them the entire post office was stunned by the “compassion shown from people all over the country.”
Noah and Diana decorated the Christmas tree and put Santas in the windowsill and read every card together. Noah’s dad, Scott, lifted the boy up as high as he could to put a star on the top of the tree. The family was offered clowns, Santas, Christmas Carolers, and “even a snow delivery” to make sure that “Noah had a white Christmas” to which she replied, “I said that we are happy with cards!”
Diana wrote in her Carepages site that she and Scott were humbled that they were able to teach others about pediatric cancer through Noah’s story and thanked everyone for their support. “Knowing there isn't anything that you can do to save your child,” Diana wrote, “is the most difficult thing to live through. Giving him Christmas is a great gift that Scott and I can give Noah.”
The next day, Wednesday November 4th, brought 416 more cards from the Post Office and packages and cards from a local school. A camera crew from Detroit’s Channel 4 arrived at their door and produced a story about this Christmas miracle of love and compassion. Natalie Sentz was the reporter and agreed with Diana that Noah was “fifty years old trapped in a five-year-old body.” She reported that “the 5-year-old said an angel figurine ornament was his favorite because it reminded him of where he’ll soon be. ‘In heaven, and I’m going to be an angel,’ Noah said.” The reporter wrote, “Diana said she is asking that instead of sending gifts to Noah, send $1 in a card to the family and they will donate it to the University Of Michigan neuroblastoma research center and the Michigan Make A Wish Chapter.” (You can see the full story on www.clickondetroit.com and search for Noah Biorkman.)
At night, the family had a scare when Noah’s nose started bleeding heavily and after getting instructions from Dr. Pituch and doing what he said for the next hour, the bleeding finally stopped. They knew that the next day, Noah was to get his blood count checked and they prayed he wouldn’t need anymore blood. He was already getting 80mg of Methadone every six hours which somehow, Diana wrote, “allows him to walk and play.”
Diana and Scott felt that it was worth pumping up Noah with Methadone and steroids because every single day Noah got to live and each and every moment they got to spend with their little boy was an extraordinary gift.
But that night, Noah’s nose started bleeding again at midnight and his mom finally got it to stop but later that night, the bleeding didn’t stop. “When he woke up,” Diana wrote, “he had blood down the side of his face, a pool of blood was on his shoulder on his shirt, and blood was on the pillow and bed.” His grandmother, who handles Noah’s bleeding better than Diana, rode with him all the way to the clinic, with a washcloth over his nose, putting pressure to stop the blood from flowing.
At the clinic, his blood platelet count was 5 compared to a normal count of 150-300, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying his hospital room decorated for Christmas or his nurse’s Christmas stocking that she gave him or the Christmas celebration that the staff of doctors, nurses, and attendants got to share with him. He was tired but appreciative and looking forward to the Christmas cards and presents waiting for him at his home.
Please take the time to send a card or letter to:
Noah Biorkman
3480 Petoskey Way
Milford, MI 48380
(ADDRESS CHANGE! SEE ABOVE!)
(If you already sent your cards to the previous address that was listed (in South Lyon), Noah will still receive it. There is so much incoming mail that the family wants to even it out.) (read less)
When Noah got home, “the chaos of cards and packgages began,” according to his mom. 9 people helped read what amounted to more than 2600 Christmas cards and that was just on Thursday. The mailman said that in his 31 years working for the U.S. Post Office, he had never seen anything like this. The cards and packages and toys filled his mom’s entire living room. And on the “Christmas Cards for Noah” Facebook site, thousands of messages from people all over the world greeted Noah, wishing him a Merry Christmas.
I myself received notes on my blogsite from a woman in the Netherlands, a man from Maine, and Gillian Larson from last season’s Survivor series, wishing Noah best wishes for Christmas. On the Facebook site, as of November 7th in the afternoon, over 16,000 Christmas cards had been sent over the Internet to Noah. Within a twenty minute span in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, heartfelt and personal Christmas wishes arrived from Traverse City, Florida, Northern California, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Australia, Louisiana, Canada, and Serbia, just to name a few places.
The messages varied but the desire to make a little boy’s Christmas special didn’t. Andie Wyrick wrote, “LMERRY XMAS FROM SCOTLAND,HOPE SANTA IS GOOD TO YOU,YOU ARE IN OUR THOUGHTS,GOD BLESS XX”
Astonishingly, as of Monday, November 9th, Noah had received over 20,000 Christmas cards, 10,000 on Saturday alone, and received over 40,000 Christmas wishes on the Facebook site.
Santa came on a fire truck to Noah's house on Friday night and went to Noah's room and helped him open cards and presents. But Santas from all over the world were spreading Christmas cheer to a little boy in a house in South Lyon, Michigan. There was no way not to feel the overwhelming spirit of love and compassion and cheer and the simple joy of helping someone who needed it.
As I sat at home, reading the Facebook cards, it was hard not to imagine the smiles on the faces of Noah and his parents and grandparents and entire family as they read, one by one, the incredible world-wide spread of joy that was reaching their home. I could imagine the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey felt the phenomenal spirit of all of those around him who loved him while he bathed in the exhilaration of life.
Noah and his mom and dad were feeling that love, in the early days of November as the temperature outside reached 68 degrees fahrenheit. Noah didn’t need a snow delivery or a trip to the mall.
Noah’s life might have been short but because of his parents and extended family and friends and all the thousands of newfound friends all over the world, his life has certainly been blessed.
Like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life, Noah will be earning his wings.
Who can explain/ Life and its brevity/ ‘Cause there is nothing here/ That I can understand/ You and I/ Have barely met/ And I just don’t want to let go of you yet–from “Hello, Goodbye,” by Michael W. Smith and Wayne Kirkpatrick
You’d never know it was Halloween in Phoenix. Instead of leaves all over lawns, there were palm trees and no chill in the air. The sky was clear, the sun vibrant, and at night, unless someone was wearing a costume or passing out candy, it felt like Labor Day or Memorial Day. I recollected the Halloween scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when Elliot and Michael took E.T. trick-or-treating on a sunny California evening, except I was in a Phoenix hotel room in a city that felt a little like a deserted ghost town.
“Happy Halloween,” said Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the beginning of the World Series third game, live from Philadelphia and rain delayed. Halloween somehow didn’t feel right outside of Michigan. When I walked down 16th Street near Squaw Peak, so many of the stores were closed for good and there were many For Sale and For Lease signs, just like at home. Phoenix was hit almost as hard as Michigan in home foreclosure numbers and unemployment. But unlike the Detroit area, the economy for many years rose quickly with the rise of the housing market and mortgages. When it finally arrived, the extreme economic downturn felt more like home.
Today, the United States economy is trying to come out of its “Great Recession” and supposedly, according to economists and the media, the recession is over. When I discussed business conditions with some manufacturers and distributors at the Security Hardware Distributors Association in this 2009 annual board meeting, many of us weren’t sure it was over. For us, sales were still lousy as we compared stats from the downturn. Were sales and profits down 12%, 20%, or more? Had we seen the bottom yet or was it getting worse? When I heard from a major manufacturer that new construction was worse than ever, I began to revert to my old pessimistic self again.
It was easy to be pessimistic as I began to read the new book, Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Sorkin on my Amazon Kindle. The book begins in March of 2008 when Bear Stearns was taken over by JP Morgan Chase for $2 a share with the backing of the Federal Government and details the fall of Lehman Brothers and the government bailouts and the stimulus and everything else that has happened in the last 18 months.
My mind couldn’t help floating from one thing to another as I moved from pessimism to optimism, from GDP rising to 3.5% growth to the rise of swine flu in the United States, from the “learned optimism” that should keep us focused on happiness to the David Horowitz book, A Cracking of the Heart, I was reading about the life and death of his daughter, Sarah, who had suffered from Turner Syndrome.
As I was thinking about business conditions for the next year and watching the World Series, I got a wake-up-email after coming back to my hotel room from dinner. An update from Diana was sent after midnight (12:20 Michigan time) which was only 9:20 PM in Phoenix. I had wondered before if Noah was going to be well enough to wear his Spiderman suit for Halloween. But the update was about Noah surviving the intense pain and trying to relieve his agony and get him some sleep. Diana and the hospice nurse had to give heavy dosages each day of Methadone and stool softeners and steroids and add in his IV large dosages of Dilaudid. And yet still, the pain was horrendous and Noah screamed while Diana spoke with the doctor, “Make the pain go away! I hate stupid, frickin cancer!!!”
While Noah was in pain, his parents found more bumps growing on his body, one on top of his read right about his forehead and another one on the left side. They also found a mass sticking out from the right side of his abdomen. “All of these tumors,” wrote Diana, “are like smacks in the face every time that I see or feel them. The reality of Noah’s situation hits me every day in different ways. Dr. Mody feels that our time frame is very short and to do what we want to do with him NOW.”
Noah was thankfully able to celebrate Halloween by dressing up as Batman and passing out candy at his dad’s house. But Scott was distraught about Noah not being able to hang on for dear life and asked Noah if he could possibly do his best and “hold on” till Christmas.
In response, Diana who had been told that Noah was not going to make it till the end of the year, wrote, “I called my dad, bawling, and told him to get the family together and that we are going to have Christmas next week.” She put her father in charge of the food and she was going to decorate the tree and house and then tell Noah that for them, Christmas was already here. She told Noah that she talked to Santa and gave him his list of toys and then asked her friends and family to send him Christmas cards. I called Judy on the first day of November to see if she could find a card to send Noah the week after Halloween.
Who says that you can’t celebrate Christmas in November?
Diana also mentioned that a friend had sent her lyrics to a Michael W. Smith song which had the same title as a Beatles song but different lyrics. She wrote that the lyrics were “eerie how close these are for little man,” and that she wants to play it during the video at the funeral home after Noah passes.
Hello, Goodbye
Where’s the navigator of your destiny
Where is the dealer of this hand
Who can explain
Life and its brevity
‘Cause there is nothing here
That I can understand
You and I
Have barely met
And I just don’t want to let go of you yet
Chorus:
Noah, hello, good-bye
I’ll see you on the other side
Noah, sweet child of mine
I’ll see you on the other side
And so I hold your tiny hand in mine
For the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face
Heaven calls for you
Before it calls for me
When you get there save me a place
A place where I can share your smile
And I can hold you for more than just awhile
Noah, hello, good-bye
I’ll see you on the other side
Noah, sweet child of mine
I’ll see you on the other side
I sat in my Pointe Hilton hotel room, thinking of the courageous daughter of David Horowitz who had dedicated her short life to help others. I missed the voice and spirit of my wife, Judy, and couldn’t help thinking about my daughter, Marlee, who had trick-or-treated with her friends on a windy night in Michigan. And then I imagined a little boy, his face swollen with steroids, trying to enjoy the last Halloween of his short life.
I tried to fall asleep but couldn’t.
I kept the TV on in the background and let the white noise melt away my tears until I drifted off into the other side of consciousness.
Aggman's Blog 