Jim Mathis

The Lectern

2011-12-22T09:24:00.006-06:00

In 1989 I was on the board of my church. Somebody suggested that we needed a powered lectern for one of the classrooms. The room was fairly large and the teachers were having trouble being heard. We agreed that that a lectern or podium with a built in sound system would solve the problem.

I volunteered to investigate the purchase. I decided that none of the commercially available units were just right. They were either too small or too expensive. I decided that I could build one myself that would be better than anything on the market. I had been involved designing and building sound systems before and also enjoyed wood-working. My shop was available and I wasn’t particularly busy. It was the perfect project.

I spent a few weeks studying speaker configurations, amplifiers, and microphone placement and came up with a great design. I built the cabinet out of solid oak and put on ten coats of hand-rubbed lacquer. I carefully selected a Shure microphone that had good isolation properties so that sound would not transfer when people tapped on the lectern or moved the microphone. The microphone was attached by a gooseneck with concealed wiring. The speakers were a stacked array of four eight-inch speakers.

It looked and sounded great. My wife was so impressed that she thought we should go into business making them. I wasn’t as excited because I knew that we would have to get the cost down to make it profitable. There was just too much hand work involved for the price we would be able to sell them for.

I proudly delivered the powered lectern to the church in March of 1989. It worked in the room as planned and I assumed that it was going to work out wonderfully. When I checked in on it a few months later, I found that one of the teachers and repeatedly bent the gooseneck over causing the wires to break inside. This was fine. It told me that I needed to reinforce the wiring through the gooseneck. I still considered this a prototype and learning the weaknesses was part of the process.

I made the changes, but when I checked on the lectern later I found that the high quality Shure microphone had been replaced by a cheap mike from a chain electronics store. The new microphone was noisy and susceptible to feedback reducing the overall quality considerably. I presumed that the original microphone was stolen, but I really don’t know what happened to it. By this time I was off the board and buying another Shure mike was not in my budget. I had donated all of my time and materials up to this point.

After awhile I went on to other projects and quit checking on the lectern and for several years didn’t know or think about its use or whereabouts.

About fifteen years later I noticed the lectern in a classroom. The gooseneck microphone was gone and the electronics had been stripped, but it still looked pretty good.

That lectern is still used every Sunday and several times during the week, but without the sound system. I am sure that the hundreds of people who see it each week never give it a second thought. Most would admit that it looks fine and serves it purpose. Almost nobody knows that it is not anywhere near living up to the purpose that its creator intended. I intended for the polished oak cabinet to contain a sound system allowing any speaker to be heard throughout a large room. Instead it is used only to hold notes and to give the teacher something to lean on. Not what I intended at all.

I believe that this lectern is a good metaphor for most of our lives. We are serving a useful purpose, we still look pretty good after all of these years, but our greater purpose, the reason God designed and created us in the first place, has been lost.

It could be that like the lectern, we were abused at a time when we were weak. Or it could be that somebody stole something critical like our education or a dream. Maybe somebody discouraged us from following our passion because of some misguided idea. Whatever the reason, we lost our purpose but continued to be available in some way, just not at the level God intended.

It also occured to me that if any time in the past twenty-three years, right up to now, if somebody would have come to me and asked me to restore the lectern to its original form and intent, I would have it done in a very short time, but nobody has asked.

I believe that God is the same way. If we would only turn to Him and ask Him to restore us to fulfill the mission He intended, I know He would get started right away. It may not be immediate. There may be something that needs to be done or undone. Like that lectern, it might involve some disassembly and seeing what is inside that can be used and what needs to be replaced. But God can certainly do it. After all, He created us in the first place and He doesn’t make mistakes.

Have a Wonderful Christmas

2011-12-21T16:16:00.001-06:00

As a follower of Jesus, I celebrate the birthday of Jesus on December 25 just like most of the other billions of Christians. Of course we don't really know the date Jesus was born, but December 25 is as good a day as any.

The Bible tells us that wise men travelled from a long distance to bring gifts to the new born baby who would become the Savior of the World. Because of that, it has become a tradition to give gifts to each other as part of the celebration.

Giving and receiving gifts is one of the languages of love and is a nice way to show people that we care about them and want to make an emotional connection with them. Thinking about a person and taking the time to select something that we think they would enjoy is a very real part of any relationship.

It does seem that we have taken this custom to the extreme as more and more people seem to forget about honoring Jesus and put their energy into spending money they don't have for reasons that are less than obvious.

I like to go to white elephant gift parties. The original idea of the white elephant was to give your enemies a gift that they had to spend money to house and maintain without any real benefit. A white elephant is a useless gift that puts a hardship on the receiver. The modern version is usually taken as a joke, and is a lot of fun.

Several years ago my wife and got rid of 75% of our possessions, moved from a four bedroom house to a two bedroom apartment and pledged to live more simply and tread lighter on the earth. From that point of view, most gifts are white elephants, because it turns out that it is a lot harder to sell something or give it away than it is to buy it in the first place.

Maybe it is time we changed our Christmas emphasis from buying stuff to remembering some of the things Jesus taught us. He taught a lot of things, but his central message was love and forgiveness. He said that anybody can love their friends; the real test is loving your enemies and forgiving those that hate you.

I like the idea that Christmas is close to the new year. What better way to start the year fresh than to follow Jesus' teaching and forgive those who have wronged us and make reconciliation with anybody we have had tense relationships with?

This year let us: Spend Less, Love More, Forgive Everyone, Serve Others.

Let me know how it works out.

Beryl Harrell

2011-12-01T16:19:00.003-06:00

How many of you have heard of Beryl Harrell?

There is a great story about her in the fall issue of The Fretboard Journal.

She was born in 1918 in Washington but grew up in Los Angeles. She took steel guitar lessons from steel guitar legend and pioneer Sol Ho’opi'i. By all accounts she was gorgeous and a phenomenal steel guitar player. She played in several all-girl Hawaiian bands in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

After the war, country music, and particularly western swing, became huge in Southern California and she became a sensation playing in all the famous LA clubs such as The Palomino Club. She hung out with Merle Travis, Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul Bigsby around the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1950’s. When Las Vegas took off she started playing there as well.

In 1963 at the age of 45 she decided that she was too old for playing all the clubs and late hours, so she quit music and sold her steel guitar. She went to work as a telephone operator at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, but she missed playing music so much that she became very depressed.

In 1977, not yet 60 years old, she decided that life without music wasn’t worth living, and she took her own life.

To those of us past 60 and playing as good as ever, and nowhere near gorgeous, this is an amazing story.

Science

2011-10-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

One of the great theological questions throughout the ages has been “Does God have a sense of humor?” Personally I think He does, but it may not be the same as ours. A lot of Jesus’ teachings use humor, though through language and culture changes, much of it is lost on us.

Proverb 25:2 in The Message version says, “God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things.” This is a remarkable insight into what we call “science.” It would seem that there is something like a big game of hide and seek, with God slowly disclosing nature’s secrets to us, to both His and our delight.

Of course we often get it wrong. Many of the things that were considered true just a few decades ago have been proven incorrect. In fact the joy of research is finding new things, disproving old theories, and forming new theories based on new discoveries. It is a moving target, which is the whole idea. That is why it is so amazing that we take everything that is thought to be scientific as fact.

When I was in school, science was defined as anything that is observable and repeatable. Since then that definition has expanded greatly and now includes many theories and ideas that have not been observed and aren’t repeatable.

God delights in us finding out how things work, but I doubt if He would find any delight in the current situation where science has been elevated to a god. Faithful people now find themselves defending God against science instead of the other way around.

One of the most obvious characteristics of current society is the high place given to science. If someone says something is scientific, it becomes hard to argue with it. Science has indeed become god to the majority of people.

Tool Time

2011-06-04T13:58:00.003-05:00

When I was sixteen years old and working on my first car, I needed a Phillips screwdriver. The cheap ones my Dad had in his tool box were worn out and not too useful. So I took my freshly minted driver’s license, got in my Pontiac and drove to the hardware store.

The hardware guy directed me to some cheap screwdrivers not unlike the one’s my dad had. After I insisted that I wanted a good screwdriver, he showed me one that was equal to about 4 or 5 hours of minimum wage labor. I happily parted with my hard-earned money and finished the job.

I have used that same Phillips screwdriver almost every week of my life since – 47 years. My mantra since then has been “you have to have good tools.” That applies to musical instruments, cameras, as well as hammers and screwdrivers.

Most of the tools I have, I have owned for decades. I tend to buy the best stuff and keep it forever. That doesn’t work with digital things, but for about everything else, that has worked for me.

Today I decided to empty the contents of my six tool boxes onto my work table and have a big Tool Sort.

It turned out to be a trip down memory lane as I saw tools related to various projects and phases in my life. Specialty bicycle tools reminded me of my heavy cycling phase and some left over woodworking tools reminded me that it was ten years when I sold my woodworking shop and invested the money in musical instruments – a decision I have never regretted.

Somebody once said that the difference between people in poverty and the middle class is the people in the middle classes have tools and know how to use them. Upper class people know people who know how to use tools. I am glad I am solidly middle class.

5,000 to 5 and back to 5,000 in 100 years.

2011-05-05T13:28:00.002-05:00

In 1900 there were about 5,000 coffee roasters in the US. By 1960 that number had shrunk to five. Now there are about 5,000 again.

Interestingly, this phenomenon has occurred in a number of industries with a number of products. In a relatively new industry there are a large number of players producing a wide variety of products. Eventually the weak die off and the strongest survive and buy up others and consolidate.

This monopoly or oligopoly can go on for years or decades as quality declines, before the quality and lack of choice becomes so bad that independents begin to spring up.

The public then recognizes that they no longer have to settle for the low quality of the mass producers as more and more small high quality producers spring up.

Everybody wins except the old oversized oligopoly who now must try to learn from the new smaller competitors. In many cases they never learn and die themselves.

In the past one hundred years this has happened not only to coffee, but beer, recorded music, the movie industry, television programming, musical instruments, to some degree automobiles, and I am sure many other products.

The bottom line: if you want to encourage quality products, buy from the independent companies; buy your music direct from the musicians; and drink locally roasted coffee and locally brewed beer.

An Argument for Higher Taxes

2011-02-08T13:31:00.002-06:00

Every so often somebody will take a survey of the various nations to see who are the happiest people. They will then publish a list, ranking the world’s nations by how happy they are. I was looking at one of these list a few weeks ago and noticed that the USA was way down the list, perhaps close to the middle of the range along with many impoverished and third world countries.

A few days later, in another publication, I saw a list of countries, listing their rates of taxation. I was startled to see that it was almost exactly the same list. The higher the taxes, the happier the people. How could this be? I went on to discover that the happiest people, with the highest taxes, also had some of the highest rates of entrepreneurship and successful businesses. So much for the idea that high taxes hurt business.

Norway for example, has free education and free health care for everybody, meaning they have a very healthy, highly educated population, which leads to successful businesses, a healthy economy, and happy people. People are not hampered by student loans and businesses don’t have to pay out huge sums to provide health care for their employees. Sure, they have high taxes, but you get what you pay for.

In turns out that in countries such as Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc. the people see taxes in much the same way as they see any other expenditure. The emphasis is not so much on how much it costs, but what do they get for their money. Instead of seeing taxes as something the government forces on us and that we should we resist as much as possible. The happiest countries see taxes as a way to buy the things they want. For example good education, health care, good highways, and public art are all things that are considered to be good value for public money. Politicians are held accountable for giving good value for the money spent, not just on keeping the taxes low.

The Governor of Kansas just dissolved the Kansas Arts Commission to save money. I never considered the Kansas Arts Commission a particular extravagant organization and certainly not a waste of money.

It is interesting that a report just came out in the US indicating that Federal taxes are at a 60 year low as a factor of the overall economy. In other words, taxes have not been lower since the Truman Administration, yet we seem unhappy about just about everything.

Could it have something to do with the fact that our schools are suffering, college costs, and medical care are outrageous, and arts organizations are begging for handouts, while the governments are in debt, refusing to tackle a tax code that taxes us at rates that are among the lowest and most inconsistent in the world.

Something to think about.

Our Brain Garden

2010-12-01T09:26:00.000-06:00

I have always found it interesting how our brains work and how much different people are from one another. I recently came up with an analogy which helps me understand this a little better and is consistent with recent research.

Imagine our brains, or our minds if you will, as a garden. The garden can be anything. It can be beautiful with lots of flowers or rich with vegetables of all kinds. When we are born our brains are basically an empty lot. God has fertilized the soil and planted some seeds. Each person has received different amounts of fertilizer or intelligence, and a different variety of seeds. We might call the seeds gifts, or talents.

Soon there are little sprouts here and there and the seeds begin to grow in the fertile ground. It takes until about age five or six before the bare soil is covered with vegetation. That is when we are first able to do complex problem solving. That is why we generally start children in school and this age because this is when they are first able to understand more complex ideas such as math and spelling. Of course this varies from person to person because we are all different with varying amounts and varieties of “seeds” and “fertilizer” in our brain.

As we reach adolescence, the brain blossoms like a garden on a warm day after a spring rain. That is why teenagers think they know it all, because they know so much more than they did just a few years before. The truth is, at that point our brains are just an overgrown mess, with weeds and unruly growth everywhere you look, like a neglected garden. This goes a long way toward explaining teenage behavior.

We then start a life-long process of tending the garden. We can selectively pull up weeds, nurture the plants we like, and trim or prune to our heart’s desire; literally – what out heart desires.

We are still dealing with the seeds that God planted all those years ago, and we are limited to the richness of the soil, our basic intelligence. But for the most part, the amount of care and attention we put into tending the garden is what counts the most in the long term.

Tending the garden that is our brain looks like reading, education, the friends we have, the music we listen to, what television programs we watch, everything that goes into out head.

Because what we think about determines what we do and how we act; what we choose to nurture and what we choose to ignore or let die, determines our life. We can have a fruitful garden, a beautiful garden, a beautiful fruitful garden, or it can be a mess our whole lives.

Our lives will most likely be smoother if we identify the seeds that we have early on and work and tend them accordingly. In other words, understand our giftedness and follow up with education and work that best suits our giftedness. But no matter what, just paying attention to how we feed our head, how we tend the garden that is our mind, will decide the ultimate outcome of our lives.

On Poverty

2010-11-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

There has been recent news about the poverty level in the US being at records highs. Of course they are talking about income level which is only one measure of poverty, and not a very good one.

I grew up in one of the poorest counties in the nation and now live in one of the richest, so I have thought about this a lot. How I got here is a bit of a mystery, but it boils down to an insatiable hunger for knowledge.

Reducing poverty to the notion of income or money is simplistic and leads us down rabbit trails in finding a solution. If that was the problem, just giving people more money would solve the problem. Lyndon Johnson tried that and it didn't work.

It seems to me that the dividing line between the classes in this country is education. Not the availability of education or the quality of the schools, but simply the desire to learn. Growing up in a very low income town, I got to see the kids get sorted out real fast. The dividing line was the desire to learn. That dividing line is even more prevalent today.

Some people are always learning, always reading, always going to seminars and continuing education classes. These are the successful people, regardless of their income level. Other people have no desire to learn anything new. They drop out of school, figure they already know it all, and if they get a job, never advance because they have no desire to learn. These are the people who live in poverty, regardless of their income level.

This is the culture issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

I have really been enjoying teaching seminars and classes lately, because I get to know people who have an honest desire to learn new things.

Physical Fitness

2010-10-13T13:25:00.002-05:00

The Bible in I Corinthians 6:9 reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and that we are to honor God with our bodies. This has a number of implications and taking care of our health is certainly one of them.

I have not written about physical fitness before but this seems like a good time. As I see some of the evidence around me such as the huge amounts of money spent on health care related to obesity and poor eating habits, and even chubby folks passing themselves off as fitness coaches, I decided I should try to encourage some of you with a little of my story.

I bought a new car in 1984. When I reached under the car and pulled on a wrench on the oil drain plug at the first oil change, I sprang my shoulder. We were leaving for vacation and I spent the week skiing nursing a sore shoulder. I was 36 years old. That is when I realized that youth was no longer on my side.

When we returned home, I joined Gold’s Gym, enlisted a fitness coach for a short time to get the basics down, and set out on a disciplined routine. I began a diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in fat. I worked out with weights and on cardio equipment three times a week and got plenty of rest. I also subscribed to wellness and medical newsletters to learn about, and stay up on, the latest in fitness ideas. I have continued this routine faithfully through the years.

In the last 26 years, I have never missed a day of work due to illness, I have never been treated by a doctor or been in a hospital, and I take no medications. My weight has varied less than 10 pounds.

I realize that with a sample size of one and no control group, this is hardly a scientific study, but for an experiment of one in healthy living and consistent exercise, I believe that I have been successful.

I am sometimes accused of preaching the gospel of physical fitness, but now is the time to start encouraging my friends to take better care of themselves. I realize that it is very difficult to start improving your health if you are already over weight or in poor condition. The best thing to do is to start with good habits when you are young, so that you never have to spend the time and effort needed to break old habits and overcome years of neglect. But one can start anytime.

The best time to start living a healthy lifestyle was probably twenty or thirty years ago. The next best time is today.

If you are fifty pounds overweight and get winded climbing a flight of stairs, I am sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. I have never had that experience. If you are in good shape now, keep up the good work. My experience has been that it takes more effort to stay in top physical condition as our bodies’ age, but it is worth it.

How old will we be in heaven?

2010-09-21T09:59:00.001-05:00

How old will we be in heaven? This is a question that has been around since the beginning of time. The only people who don’t ask it are the ones who don’t think they are going there. One possible answer is that we would be the age we were when we died. Some of us would be very old, while others would be babies, or unborn. I think the answer may be less obvious. It is possible that we have sort of a preset age in our brains.

When I was a child in the ‘50s, a lot of people called me “the little man.” I would have been perfectly happy to wear a suit and carry a briefcase to grade school if I could have. I am not sure I didn’t sometimes. When I was in college in the ‘60s, others were turning on and dropping out. I didn’t get it. I was starting businesses.

Eventually, I hit my stride and the world was a wonderful place. For years the world was in sync and I was as happy as a clam. Actually, I don’t really know if clams are happy or not, that is just an expression.

Now people who were born about the same time I was are getting old while I am not. I know this is delusional, but that is the way it seems to me.

One of my heroes, filmmaker, Warren Miller, asks the question, “If you didn’t know how old you are, how old do you think you are?” His answer is 14. He has always considered himself a wisecracking 14 year old, even though he is now in his eighties. I know a lot of people who are emotionally and intelligently in junior high their whole lives. I also know people who have been seventy-five their whole lives.

Personally, I know how old I will be in heaven. I will be the same age I have always been, no matter how old my body is, forty-two. How old are you?

Schools Kill Creativity

2010-07-15T11:18:00.001-05:00

Here is an excellent video on creativity by Ken Robinson:

Types of Commitment

2010-05-27T11:33:00.002-05:00

There are different kinds and different levels of commitment. My favorite analogy is about the bacon and eggs breakfast. The chicken was involved, but the hog was committed.

Some people seem to never commit to anything, while others are quick to commit and just as quickly, uncommit. Others are slow to commit, but once a decision is made they go all out. I’m in the last group.

A number of years ago my wife and I were involved with a weekly Bible Study group. We met every Thursday night for about seven years. We only missed once or twice during that time and only because we were gone on vacation. There were six couples and it was rare when all twelve of us were there. This was always a mystery to me why people couldn’t commit.

I eventually figured out that some people commit to people and some to the event. To us, the Bible study was only a little important but the relationships were extremely important. We were committed to the people, not the event. It was easy to blow-off the event, but we couldn’t let our friends down, even though they consistently showed us through their actions that we weren’t all that important to them.

In a business setting we try to commit to an event, a product, or a service, but more often than not, we are really committed to the people. That is why when a procedure is put ahead of relationships, there is friction. We do business with people we like. The best companies hire for personality and train for skill, not the other way around.

Some personality types do tend to commit more to events. Here is a little test. Assume that you and a friend are planning to do something together, say go to a movie, and that person has to cancel. Do you go anyway, find someone else to go with you, or reschedule a time to go with your friend? Of course situations vary, but there is probably a trend. You are probably either committed to an event or schedule, or to people.

A few years ago I was on the board of not-for profit organization and we made a conscience decision to stop being event driven and start being people driven. I am not sure we accomplished much more, we were a lot happier and left less bodies in our wake.

I am not sure that one way is best, but it helps to understand that there is a difference.

Sweet Tea is Heading North

2010-05-11T15:36:00.001-05:00

The sweet tea line is encroaching on the north. Whether the armadillos are following the sweet tea or the sweetened tea comes with the armadillos is anybody’s guess.

Not too many years ago, we hardly ever saw an armadillo in Kansas, or even in Oklahoma for that matter; and if you wanted your iced tea sweet you put in a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Now days flat armadillos are a regular feature of highway driving in Kansas and Missouri and waitresses have taken to asking if you want sweetened or unsweetened tea.

The amazing thing about this question is, how do you unsweeten tea? Tea is not sweet to begin with; therefore, you have to not add sugar to make it unsweetened. Taking the sugar out is a major trick.

At any rate, the line between sweet tea drinkers and us regular unadulterated tea types used to be the Mason-Dixon line. Then it became I-44. According to my friend, world traveler, and observer of such things, Dave Smart, the sweet-tea-line is now I-70. The alarming thing about this observation is that I live south of I-70, as do many of my friends. That means that the sweet tea infestation is near. It is time to defend ourselves. Can ‘possom stew and grits be far behind? And we haven’t even talked about Krispy Kreme.

I am sure that this is all caused by global warming and it is Al Gore’s fault.

Friends, let’s start rounding up the armadillos (those that haven’t already tried to cross the road) and send them back to Texas. And then next time somebody says, “Honey, would ya’ll like some tea.” Just remember that it is going to be loaded with sugar, and that you heard it here first.

The Eye of a Needle

2010-04-20T11:30:00.001-05:00

When Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, it was a joke, but He wasn’t kidding. In modern language He could have said that it would easier to sell refrigerators to Eskimos; or maybe the rich man has a snowball’s chance in hell. It was that sort of statement. He went on to add; but anything is possible with God. This camel story appears three times in the Bible, so it was no casual comment.

That passage has worried me all my life and I think it comes down to the definition of “rich.” By the world’s standards, all Americans are rich. By my standards, anyone with more money than me is rich. I once thought that rich meant running water and flush toilets. Now I’m more inclined to think that it means gold-plated faucets.

My favorite recent definition of “rich” is to demonstrate our ability to be wasteful.

Not too many decades ago, if we owned land we used it to graze livestock, plant crops, or build something on it. Somebody decided that they could flagrantly demonstrate their wealth by setting aside a piece of prime real estate in front of their house. They would not graze cattle, or grow food, but just grow grass and then cut it down and throw it away. Now, just about everybody has a lawn, but few remember the purpose was to demonstrate that we are so wealthy that we have land to waste.

When Jesus condemned the rich, I think He was referring to the flagrant waste of resources. Fast forward two thousand years. How do we flagrantly waste resources? Are we so rich that we never have to open a window but instead rely on heating and air conditioning to maintain an even temperature in our office buildings? Are we so rich that we can drive around in oversized vehicles that are too large for our purposes? Are we so rich that we not only set aside space to raise grass just to look at, but then use millions of gallons of water to keep it green, just to cut it down? Are we so rich that we can keep fifty gallons of water hot, just in case we need it, instead of heating water only when we want hot water? I could go on for a long time, but I think you get the idea.

In the Old Testament, in II Samuel 15:1 “Absalom provided for himself a chariot with horses and fifty men to run in front of him.” I laugh every time I read that because I know so many people who would do that if they could. I presume that in Absalom’s time that was the equivalent of as stretch limo. He used it to impress people and it apparently worked. If you haven’t heard of Absalom, it is because God was not nearly as impressed as the people were and he quickly met his demise.

King Solomon is depicted as one of the wisest and wealthiest men ever to have lived, but he died unhappy and dejected. His autobiographical poem, the “Book of Ecclesiastes,” often refers to the vanity of chasing after things.

Surveys indicate that if there is any correlation between wealth and happiness it is the opposite of what we might expect. The wealthiest people are often among the most unhappy. The lottery has destroyed more lives than it has ever brought happiness.

Is it possible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? Well, like Jesus said, “Anything is possible with God.”

Bob the Painter

2010-03-29T09:24:00.002-05:00

Bob loved to go to art museums, so he decided he would become a painter. He studied the art of the old masters and began to learn to copy them brush stroke for brush stroke. He learned about color and texture and became a very good painter.

Bob’s favorite artist was Van Gogh so he decided that he would copy all of Van Gogh’s paintings. He became very good at copying Van Gogh and eventually could make exact copies of Van Gogh’s painting without even looking at the original.

Bob entered his paintings in an art fair, but the judges just laughed and said, “These are just copies of Van Gogh. These have already been done.” Bob was sad, but he went to the art fair anyway. There he found all kinds of exciting new paintings, things like he had never seen in the museums. Wonderful new exciting things were around every corner. So Bob sat down to think and listen to a band that was playing as part of the art fair.

The band played all of his favorite songs that he had heard on the radio many times. Then the headline band got up to play. They looked and sounded just like his favorite band from 1964. They played all the great songs from 1964 to 1968. They sounded just like the original band.

Bob soon learned that this band was paid hundreds of dollars to sound like the old band, but the artists had to pay hundreds of dollars to show the new and exciting art.

Bob was very confused. He decided to become an accountant where cents makes sense, and he did not have to decide if he should copy the old masters or make new art.

Bob died that day, and he was buried fifty-four years later.

The End.

Toyota's Troubles

2010-03-08T09:22:00.001-06:00

In 1958, I carefully cut out pictures of all the new cars from magazines and put them in a scrapbook, grouped by manufacture, make, model, and list price. I have been a follower of the auto industry ever since.

With that in mind I decided to weigh in on the Toyota deal. I heard the media say that Toyota has a reputation for quality, safety, and reliability. That is not quite true. Those are three different and mostly unrelated qualities. BMW and Mercedes Benz are known for quality. Volvo and Volkswagen are known for safety, and Toyota and Honda have a reputation for reliability.

Of the three, reliability is the most elusive. This is partly because all cars are pretty reliably these days with little difference between manufactures. Also, there are many ways to measure reliability. If we look at the number of times we have to take the car back to the dealer in the first 90 days, we would be looking at a totally different list than if we are talking about the cost of maintaining a car with 100,000 miles on the clock. Which is most important is up to the individual and of course, as they say, your mileage may vary.

Toyota’s problem was that in trying to hold on to this precarious position, they chose the route of denial, blaming their detractors, and offering a quick fix, instead of addressing the problem.

The lesson for the rest of us is to face our challenges head on, admit when we make mistakes, and solve the problems as best we can, as quickly as possible. Toyota, in believing their own marketing, has shown that any other approach doesn’t work.

Caring for the Poor

2010-02-23T10:28:00.002-06:00

When Jesus began his earthly ministry, He stated His purpose in a statement at the synagogue in Nazareth. Reading from the Book of Isaiah He said, “God's Spirit is on me; He's chosen me to preach the message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God's year to act!’” Later, the Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:10, referring to the church at Jerusalem, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”

A central message throughout scripture is the importance of caring for the poor, the homeless, the orphans, and widows. It is not our place to judge how they got there, but only to do what we can to help.

Last night, Sky Blue, (Bob, Theresa, & Jim) played a special concert for about 100 homeless men at the Kansas City Rescue Mission. http://www.kcrm.org/ We didn’t preach to them or beat up on them, but rather, attempted to bring some light and joy into their lives. We were very warmly received and it was a very good experience. I am sure we will do it again soon.

This morning I attended a meeting of the Leawood, KS Chamber of Commerce. Leawood is one of the highest income per capita cities in the United States. The meeting was only about a twenty minute drive from the rescue mission, but the contrast between the two groups couldn’t have been greater. Frankly, I am right at home in the Leawood group, and I felt a little uncomfortable at the mission, but one doesn’t have to very observant to know where the greater need is. Jesus didn’t call us to be comfortable.

I have spent most of my life thinking about the difference between the people at the Chamber of Commerce and the ones gathered at the rescue mission. At the chamber meeting we talked about all the great new restaurants in Leawood. The people at the mission were there because of an offer of free food and a warm place to sleep.

So far, my only conclusion about the difference is: not that much. When I was five years old, I was told I was smart, that I could do anything I wanted, and I was encouraged to read. Most of my new friends at the mission were told they were dumb, that they would never amount to anything, and they never read a book. Encouragement verses discouraging comments, education verses dropping out, maybe a few bad choices, and the difference is either sitting in a nice office in Johnson County or standing in a food line at 15th and Cherry.

Jesus knew the differences were small. I firmly believe that God provided some with abundance to help those in need, but 80% of churches do nothing at all for the poor or homeless.

No matter what your situation, there is always something you can do to help someone less fortunate, even if it is just singing them a few songs.

Seat Belts

2010-02-22T14:14:00.003-06:00

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, as part of a 4-H project, I got very involved with promoting public safety. As part of the program several of us were on a live weekly radio program about safety, especially automobile safety.

We would often talk about the need for automobile seat belts. This was in 1961 and very few manufactures offered seat belts as optional equipment, much less standard equipment. By the time I was 15 I was very much convinced that seat belts could and did save lives.

I was not quite 16 when I got me first car, a bright green 1952 Pontiac Catalina 2-door hardtop. The first thing I did on the very first weekend, was go down to the auto parts shop and buy a set of seat belts and install them myself, making sure that they were bolted directly to the frame of the car. I never started the car without first buckling the seat belt.

A year or so later, I was driving home from school with a friend when I topped a hill doing about 60 MPH to find another car straddling the center line. I swerved but over corrected and hit the steep ditch nose first. The car flipped over end for end, sliding upside down on the pavement, before continuing to roll, landing on its wheels.

My friend and I jumped out of the car as I realized that my beautiful Pontiac was now a scrap of metal with deep grooves gouged in the roof from our upside down slide. Neither of us had a scratch. Without seat belts, the outcome would have been much different. Many people have been killed in much less serious accidents because they hadn’t bothered to fasten the seat belt that was already in the car.

After that I got a 1956 Pontiac, a 1958 Oldsmobile, and ’59 Olds, all of which I installed seat belts myself. The next car, a ’61 Chrysler New Yorker came with factory belts. A ’61 Thunderbird was the last car that I had to install seat belts in, after that, the other 30 or so cars I’ve owned came with factory seat belts, mostly three-point types with a shoulder belt.

A little know statistic is that traffic fatalities per mile driven have dropped every year since the 1920’s when they first started keeping track of such things. This is largely due to increased use of seatbelts, with slight improvements due to better belts and airbags. The other big reasons are better highways and cars that stop and handle better.

I was thinking about this after seeing the movie “Crazy Heart” last weekend. In one scene, the hero, “Bad Blake” suffers a concussion and a broken ankle after rolling his Suburban without having his seatbelt on. It reminded me of another relatively minor accident a few years ago when a Kansas City Chiefs football player was killed when he was thrown from his Suburban because he didn’t have his seatbelt fastened.

Fasten those seatbelts folks. Somebody might need you someday.

Knowing too much

2010-02-12T10:57:00.003-06:00

Ted DeMoss, the late president of CBMC would occasionally comment that a person was “educated beyond their intelligence.” This was just his funny way of saying that the person knew too much and thought too little.

I can certainly see where this whole idea of knowing too much and not thinking enough is a common trait. I see it in myself. In my early career, I started a photofinishing business. I know absolutely nothing about photofinishing, so I had to think through everything and figure it all out for myself, relying mainly on my heart and intuition. (I know now that this was wisdom from God and not any knowledge I had.) This led to some very creative solutions that set us apart and led to a very successful business.

Later in another project, I was very well prepared and approached the business pretty much along the lines of our competitors. This business was no more successful than some others in the field. In retrospect, I am sure it was because we were not forced to be creative and find new and better ways of doing things. We relied on our own understanding.

This seems counter-intuitive. One would expect that the more you know about something the better, but it doesn’t always work that way. I suspect that Steve Jobs never would have started Apple Computers if he had come from a background with IBM. His lack of computer experience caused him to think in totally new ways.

In the spiritual terms we could say to trust God and not our own knowledge. Proverbs 3: 5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”

Before the Renaissance 500 years ago, it was assumed that all people were about the same and if someone was capable of produced art, music, or literature, that they somehow had a received a gift from the supernatural of some sort. People would say that someone had a genius, not that they were a genius. With the renaissance came a belief in humanism and that man was highly capable of creativity on his own. While this type of thought has some practical advantages, it is not altogether correct.

God most surely gives and takes away gifts, and we should not give ourselves too much credit or beat ourselves up too much, if we do not have the gifts we want. Chances are we are gifted in ways that probably don’t seem like gifts to us. One of my definitions of giftedness is if we don’t see why others are not like us.

Mark Twain said the real danger is not in not knowing something, but in being absolutely certain of something that is wrong.

The only thing worse than too much information is having the wrong information. That is why it is dangerous to trust in ourselves too much.

30 Years of Lifting Weights

2010-02-04T13:35:00.001-06:00

About 30 years ago, I realized that youth was no longer on my side and decided to join a gym and start lifting weights to get into shape. I was assigned a personal trainer who took my measurements and made up a chart of the exercises I should be doing. I kept the chart in a file drawer at the gym along with all the other members.

I faithfully and regularly worked out, recording my somewhat remarkable progress. One day a few months later, I went for my regular workout to find the file drawer missing. I was told that they had thrown out the charts; they didn’t know how many people used them, and besides, it wasn’t their responsibility to keep track of everybody’s charts anyway. I was furious. I could have easily kept my chart in my gym bag if I had known they were going to throw them out.

Not long after that the management posted signs at the parking places closest to the door saying they were reserved for the owner and managers. It was not unusual to see the parking lot full, with cars on the street with the four or five parking spaces by the door blocked, being reserved in case the owner should stop by. It was pretty obvious that the needs of the members were of little interest.

Of course, I cancelled my membership and moved to another gym. Now 30 years later, I still workout and lift weights regularly. I think I am in better shape now than I was when I was thirty. Of course, I will never know, since Gold’s threw out my workout charts years ago.

On being flexible

2010-01-18T15:06:00.001-06:00

This week I heard two different definitions of being flexible. One method which I am familiar with is flying by the seat of your pants because you haven’t prepared. This seems to be what most people are referring to when they say they are flexible.

A better definition of being flexible is being so over prepared that you are prepared for just about any contingency. This seems to make a lot more sense.

I was at a gig recently when the question of flexibility came up. I said I was flexible. It dawned on me that what I meant was that I had about every piece of equipment I might need, and a few backups, in the car. Not that we would make do with what we had as is sometimes what we mean by being flexible.

Yes, flexibility is a good thing, but only if it means being over-prepared and not under-prepared.

Foul Language and Consistent Pricing

2010-01-12T09:14:00.003-06:00

I have inadvertently got caught up in a couple of controversies lately that I didn’t even know were controversial.

The first was a few months ago when I responded to a survey asking whether cursing was ever appropriate in a business setting. I said no and soon found out I was in the minority. Later when I quoted my late father as saying that foul language is a sign of a lack of vocabulary and poor education, I was surprised by the negative response. And when I said that if I ever heard one of my employees cussing a customer, I would show them the door, there was even more negative response. Someone suggested that I was out of touch. Obviously I am because I thought cursing went out of style with smoking. I presume that most of those people have no idea how much business their language has cost them.

Then this last month I commented in a professional photographer’s magazine that photographers should follow the lead of other professions and develop a consistent pricing policy. It turns out many, or maybe most, commercial photographers make up prices as they go based on the clients ability or willingness to pay.

In looking at the history of civilization, one mark of a civilized culture is consistent pricing. Third world street merchants are pretty good at sizing up their customers and extracting as much money as they can from them. In western culture, we rely on prices in stores being well-marked and everybody paying the same price. I know how much my mechanic charges an hour and my dentist will quote a flat rate for teeth cleaning no matter who calls.

In every business I have owned, setting the prices, publishing a rate card, or displaying a menu has been a high priority. Restaurants know that they live or die by their menu. When I decided to get back in the photography business a few years ago, having sold my photo lab in 1996, the first thing I did was decide on my hourly rate. I charge $50 an hour plus expenses, with prints and extra CDs a la carte. If there is any negotiating with a client it is over how much time a project should take, not how much I charge per hour. If I get too busy, I will raise my hourly rate. This is basic Econ 101.

Five thousand years ago Moses cautioned the Israelites in Deuteronomy 25: 13-16, “You must use accurate scales when you weigh out merchandise, and you must use full and honest measures. Yes, always use honest weights and measures, so that you may enjoy a long life in the land the Lord your God is giving you. All who cheat with dishonest weights and measures are detestable to the Lord your God.” The problem Moses faced was merchants using a different set of weights depending upon the customer. In modern terms - treat everybody the same.

I researched some books on business ethics and just about everybody addresses this issue. The most common problem is charging poor people more and wealthier people less without a sound business reason. For example should people with less money pay a higher interest rate than a major corporation; after all, what is the chance of General Motors going bankrupt? (That’s a joke.)

The last time I addressed this issue it concerned the wholesale cost of film. My question was “Is Walmart seeing the same price list as I am?” The answer was yes they were. If I wanted to buy film by the truckload and send my own trucks to Rochester to pick it up, I would get the same price as Walmart.

But the opposite question is, “Is Walmart paying more for their commercial photography just because they have deep pockets.” Apparently they are. Commercial photographers still size up the client, shoot from the hip and charge whatever they think they can get away with. Portrait and wedding photographers usually have printed price list, offer a variety of packages, and let the cutomers know what they are getting for the money, and charge everybody the same.

My dad was in the auction business. An auction is the purest form of letting the market determine the price. The rest of us have to make sound business decisions based on what we think out product or service is worth; and then stick by those decisions until we have a good reason to change our prices.

After five thousand years, it seems most professionals are finally standardizing their rates and charging fair and consistent prices to all of their clients.

Ice Driving

2009-12-28T10:23:00.001-06:00

In 1968, me and four others musicians left Manhattan, Kansas for a gig in Guyman, OK 350 miles away in the Oklahoma panhandle. Before long, rain had begun to pour. Soon it was freezing on the road and our windshield.

About thirty-miles outside of Dodge City, we were stopping every few minutes to scrape the ice off of the windshield since the defroster in my nearly new ’67 Ford Econoline Van would not keep up. There was about a half inch of solid ice on everything and it was coming down fast. After one stop, I pushed the accelerator down and heard a snap. The throttle linkage had broken. We somehow propped the throttle open a little and limped into Dodge at about 15 MPH, which was a comfortable speed considering the conditions.

The Ford dealer said he could have the part in a couple of days. We called to cancel the gig, but the promoter had already cancelled due to the ice storm. Wiser folks would have checked in into a hotel, but we fashioned a make-shift throttle linkage out of coat hanger and headed back to Manhattan, 230 miles away, driving the entire distance on ice, holding onto a piece of coat hanger hooked to the carburetor.

We arrived home almost 24 hours after we left, driving 20 hours on ice, half of that with a hand operated throttle, having accomplished absolutely nothing.

Twenty years later, my wife and I decided that we had had enough white knuckle driving and enrolled in ice-driving school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. (www.winterdrive.com) There we learned about four-wheel drive, all-wheel-drive, front wheel drive, rear-wheel drive and the advantages and disadvantages of each. We spent hours driving each type on ice learning how to maintain control and regain control once you lose it. Since we were avid skiers, this made our annual winter trips to the mountains much less nerve racking.

Now I actually look forward to getting out and playing in the snow. The beautiful days we are now having with blue skies and fresh white powder on everything makes me wonder why we didn’t plan a winter vacation this year.

The Golden Rule

2009-12-22T16:41:00.003-06:00

Every business person I know understands that the key to success is treating your customers well. Jesus laid out the basic principle for business when he said to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We even call that the golden rule.

I know of only two industries where this is not normal business: banking and airlines. In both situations the federal government has had to step in with new rules and regulations to keep certain businesses from abusing their customers. I find it amazing that this is even necessary.

The airlines now face fines of up to $27,500 per passenger if they leave passengers stranded for more than three hours on the tarmac. I presume that this will get their attention. Of course they are squealing. Apparently it takes that threat to stop certain airlines from physically abusing their customers, because they did it more than 600 times last years in the US. The European Union already has similar laws about such things.

Most of us in business don’t have to be threatened by the government to treat our customers right, because we know they will go down the street to the next guy if we don’t. It would be nice if the big banks and big airlines would start seeing their customers as assets to be nurtured and not as captives to be gouged and abused.

Why war?

2009-12-10T16:04:00.001-06:00

On the day when President Obama went over to Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize, I was thinking about war and peace and violence in general. The skeptics are right to question whether the leader of a violent country like the US is qualified to receive the prize; especially when we are involved in two wars that we started. But the other side is that President Obama didn’t start the wars, and he appears to be trying to get us out of them, though not very whole heartedly. That may not be ideal qualifications for the Nobel Peace Prize, but not many others seem to be doing much better.

In a bigger concept, violence on any level is just the ultimate failure to communicate. Whether it is the punk on the street frustrated with not being able to get a job, to nations feeling like they have somehow been violated, violence is always rooted in poor communication.

The kid who feels like nobody cares about him or understands him will turn to violence to make his point. Groups of people opposed to everything from abortion to “infidels” sometimes turn to violence because they think that the world is not listening to their concerns. Responses and tit for tat quickly lead to gang wars and wars between nations. Jesus said, “If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek.” Instead most people and nations believe that standing up for our “rights” is more important than stopping violence.

Perhaps we should rename the State Department the “Department of Peace” to remind them that that is their job. War is always the result of failed diplomacy. If the Department of Peace (State, or Foreign Ministry as most countries call it) received as much funding as the Department of Defense, the world would be a completely different place. And by the way, the War Department’s named was changed to Department of Defense to remind them they are defensive not an offensive group, but I’m not sure it has helped. I can’t even name all the wars that we have fought in just my life time.

Perhaps the Nobel committee was doing a little wishful thinking, or maybe they realized that with the Nobel Prize for Peace sitting on his desk, that President Obama might see the opportunity he has to actually advance world peace in this decade. But peace doesn’t start with the Department of Defense; it starts with the State Department. Peace ends with the Department of Defense.

The Fourth Quarter

2009-12-07T15:41:00.000-06:00

In watching a sporting event on television over a recent holiday weekend, there is one thing that is obvious to me: you have to play all four quarters. It is nice to get a good lead in the first half, but you still have to play the whole game. More often than not, the last two minutes are important and in the case of a recent game featuring two rivals that came down to a score with less than two seconds on the clock, the last two seconds were very important.

I am now in my sixties. Any way you look at it, I am in the fourth quarter of my life, certainly the fourth quarter of my productive years. Anything beyond eighty years is probably overtime. At sixty-one I am definitely starting the fourth quarter. Running out the clock or going to a knee, as sometimes happens in American football, at this point just doesn’t seem very sportsman like, even if I had a good lead going.

I know many people my age who are eyeing the clock figuring that they can coast to the finish line, that is, if they haven’t already given up or headed for the showers. The funny thing is I feel as good as I ever have, I’m not tired, I’m more creative, and I know a lot more. It may be time to revise the game plan, make better choices, or play like the game is one the line, but just run out the clock? I don’t think so.

The Apostle Paul uses the analogy of life being like running a race. The point being that you run all the way to the end. In I Corinthians 9:24 he said “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

We seem to have gotten the idea that at some point we can take it out of gear, coast, and still win the race. This is a relative new idea dating from the 19th and 20th century. Germany was the first country to introduce the idea of retirement in 1880. Now many, if not most people, in industrialized countries consider retirement a basic right. Whether or not a person keeps working in their career or not after a certain age should be a personal decision. We should, however, continue to serve the Lord and serve others in various capacities as long as we are able.

In Philippians 3:14 Paul says, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Paul knew that at that point the race was not over, he was pressing on until the game was over.

As for me, I intend to play hard until the final gun, whistle, Gabriel’s trumpet, or whatever it is that stops the game. After all we owe it to the coach, our team, and ourselves. That is why we were put here, to play the game until the end.

Social Media

2009-11-23T14:17:00.003-06:00

The whole phenomenon of social networking web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn is very interesting. To me, these phenomenon indicate a real need, or possibly a pent-up demand, to be connected, or to be part of something larger than ourselves.

I remember when I was in Junior Hi and High School how important it was to feel connected to the “right” people. I will admit that remembering back that far taxes my brain, but the best as I can recall, being seen with the people we considered important, or the people that we wanted to be identified with, was a big deal. Being shunned could be a devastating blow to the ego. Some of the people in my circle used the word “status.” We were always gaining or losing status based on what we said and did and we would readily point it out to each other. It sounds cruel, but in retrospect it may have been good training.

As an adult in business, these connections became quantified. Knowing the right people and more importantly, making sure they knew you, could be the difference between success and failure in finding a job, building a business, or following a career.

As time has gone on, I have come to realize more and more the importance with building quality relationships with all sorts of people. Many people make the mistake of limiting their relationships to only those people who can help them. The Bible says in the book of James, “If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, ‘Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!’ and either ignore the street person or say, ‘Better sit here in the back row,’ haven't you segregated God's children and proved that you are judges who can't be trusted?” (James 2 from The Message)

Yes, everybody is important and all relationships are important. I think this is the underlying understanding that drives sites like Facebook. The problem comes when we begin to confuse “friends” with Friends. It is remarkably easy to click on the “add friend” button and remarkably hard to develop and maintain true friendships.

The secret to long lasting relationships lies in our tongue and in our actions; what we do and what we say have long lasting effects. Colossians 4:6 in The Message says, “Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, nor cut them out.” It sounds like Paul could have led a few sales training seminars.

LinkedIn and Facebook may be good at keeping track of who we know or finding long lost acquaintances, but the danger is in thinking that a posting on a wall is communication; a tweet, is conversation; or a that a “connection” can make us connected. Face to face people are still where it’s at and reaching out to someone can’t be done by texting or sending a card.

My thoughts on health care reform.

2009-10-14T15:08:00.001-05:00

Everybody else seems to be weighing in with their views on the health care situation, so I might was well also.

My personal health care plan is simple – don’t get sick. That has worked just fine so far. I workout, watch what I eat, and don’t do much hazardous activity. For 61 years and counting that has kept me out of hospitals and kept my health care costs to near zero. I have never filed a claim for health care and I pay for any doctor’s visits, which are few and far between, out of my pocket.

And it is a good thing because I have been self-employed my whole life. That means that I have never had an employer to pick-up the tab for my health insurance. To me being self-employed is worth the risk of not having employer paid insurance. For most people it is not. In fact, lack of health care is the biggest deterrent for not starting a new business and it is the biggest expense for existing businesses.

The United States is the only country in the world where health care is tied to a person’s employer. This situation makes it extremely hard to leave a job with good benefits. Existing conditions force many people to be slaves to a job they don’t like and stifles new businesses.

When I have traveled to other countries, I have been amazed at the number of small shops and businesses there are compared to the US. I eventually realized that running a small business is much less stressful when the entrepreneur doesn’t have to worry about health care or paying health benefits. Health care is the principle reason that locally owned businesses have trouble competing with national chains.

The US is number 37 in quality of health care according to the World Health Organization, yet we pay about 40% more than anybody else. (See YouTube) This is partly because we have unhealthy lifestyles, but also due to a host of other issues. We think that more health care is better health care, therefore we tend to have more tests and procedures than are necessary. Doctors frequently order more and more expensive tests to cover themselves in case of lawsuits which are regular, often frivolous, and always expensive.

When insurance companies try to limit procedures to cut costs, they are seen as the bad guys. In truth, in an ideal, or even slightly better situation, there would be no need for insurance companies at all. After all, they are one of the biggest players in the health care system and they add nothing at all to the system except control the flow of money.

A huge amount of health care dollars go to paper work. This is due to the myriad of insurance companies, health care organizations, and government agencies. A lot of the paper work is due to the pay-for-services system where every little thing is charged to somebody. If doctors were salaried instead of being paid for each item and procedure, billions of dollars would be saved.

Americans are afraid of their government and thus the term “socialized medicine” strikes fear. The truth is socialized medicine works better in at least 36 other countries, and virtually every industrialized country, than our convoluted system of independent doctors, lawyers, hospitals, pharmacy companies, and insurance companies.

I expect that most people are willing to pay a percent of their income for health care. It should make little difference if that money is in the form of taxes, insurance, or income that they don’t get because their employer is forking it over to the insurance company instead of their employees.

I am not optimistic. We have too many people making too much money, and too many organizations with vested interest in keeping things the way they are, for there to be any kind of real reform in the near future.

Taxes and Happiness

2009-09-08T10:27:00.002-05:00

A few days ago I wrote about how angry Americans are. This sparked a discussion with a fellow writer about why this is and what surveys have been taken. I haven’t come across any surveys about anger, but there has been a lot written about the happiest nations. The USA is never mentioned in the top ten, though Canada comes in at number eight.

The happiest people are generally found in Denmark, followed with Switzerland, Austria, and the Scandinavian countries. As I was reading about the world’s happiest countries I came across another interesting statistic. The world’s highest taxes are generally in the same countries as the happiest people.

Denmark is the happiest and has the highest taxes. Sweden, Austria, Finland, and Luxemburg are all in the top ten happiest countries and are in the top ten highest tax list. This has to be more than a coincidence.

The United States is well below average in taxes paid, but is also well below normal on the happiest scale and may be one of the angriest nations in the world. Obviously, low taxes don’t make you happy and in fact, the evidence points to the opposite.

I am quite sure that people aren’t happy just because their taxes are high. Happiness come from things like good education, outstanding health care, good transportation, efficient government, and so forth. These things all cost money which come from taxes.

The next time you hear that someone is unhappy because their taxes are high, or that they don’t want to pay more taxes, think about the countries that provide good services to their people. Think about the Danes who are among the highest educated in the world and never have to worry about student loans because higher education is free. Or about the many countries that have high-quality free health care for everybody. The amount Americans pay to go to college and the huge chunk of many people’s paychecks that go to health insurance (and many people, myself included, don’t even have that option,) and it is easy to see that paying a little more in taxes and whole lot less other places, could be a pretty good deal.

A Wealth of Friends

2009-08-31T09:20:00.002-05:00

If a measure of wealth is how many friends you have, and I believe it is, we are among the world’s richest people.

Saturday night we had a few friends over for a party. No special occasion, just a gathering of friends. Ninety people came. We live in a modest apartment in the ‘burbs, so the place was packed. We had no idea who or how many people would come, but we knew that we had a variety of friends and that the mix would be eclectic.

Sure enough we had musicians, artists, antique dealers, sales people, financial planners, doctors, and everything in between. Some came on motorcycles and some in mini-vans. It was a great time!

We realized how truly blessed we are to have a community of friends that care about us and are willing to stand around our cramped apartment and enjoy each other’s company.

I believe that life does not consist of what we own, but rather who we are and the relationships we have with others. Sometimes we need to just get everybody in the same room to confirm those relationships and remind ourselves of what is important.

Anger

2009-08-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

The Kansas City Star today carried a front page story about anger. (http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/1395915.html) The story was primarily about health care reform, but the article suggested that Americans are just angry in general. In fact, we have always been angry about something. America was born out of anger toward the British Crown.

This came home to me again when I was in Europe recently, and I was reminded that not every place in the world is as angry as the US. I noticed it most when we were in England, but it is also apparent in the Scandinavian countries as well as other places. There is a peacefulness among people that doesn’t exist here. For reasons that I don’t understand, Americans are just always angry at something.

This shows up in our high crime rate, our high levels of incarceration, in entertainment, and even in the high cost of health care. We have more attorneys than anywhere else in the world because we are much more likely to want to sue somebody.

As we were riding the subway late one night in London, I realized that I would not get on public transportation after midnight in any US city. In London everybody was friendly and having a good time after a pleasant night on the town. The lack of fear and anger was startling compared to any similar situation in just about any US city.

Some people argue that Jesus showed anger when He turned over the money changers tables in the temple, but a close reading will show that that was a planned protest and not an angry outburst. And even that was the closest thing to anger or violence that Jesus showed. (Matthew 21:12)

I think it comes down to contentment. Our constitution guarantees life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Pursuing happiness as an ideal almost guarantees that we will never be happy. Lack of contentment, never being happy with our circumstances, breeds anger and resentment. Anger and resentment show up in all sorts of ways from the highest murder rate in the industrialized world to perpetually low ratings for our politicians.

I don’t see any solution short of divine intervention, but being aware of the problem and committing to personally make our little bit of the world a little less angry will certainly go a long way.

"Getting to know you, getting to know all about you"

2009-08-17T10:25:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine named Bob was telling me about a situation involving another friend, Ray. Bob told Ray that he would like to get to know him better, develop a relationship, and ultimately become better friends.

A few days later, Bob received an autographed copy of Ray’s autobiography in the mail with a note suggesting that this should tell him whatever he wanted to know. If he had any questions, feel free to call.

Needless to say, Bob felt cold and rejected. He didn’t want facts, he wanted a relationship.

I have written a short autobiographical book and have written extensively on other subjects, and I sort of assume that my friends have read at least some of what I have written; but I wouldn’t confuse that with friendship or a meaningful relationship.

Relationships are built on shared experiences and time together, not just information and facts.
I think there is a parallel here with the Bible. God has written an autobiography. Like most autobiographies, it contains history, some teaching, poetry, and solid insight into what the author is all about. Reading about God and all He has done, should not be confused with a relationship with Him; nor should we worship His book more than Him.

My mother has written her memoirs and I love the book, but I love her a lot more than I love the book. Having read the book, I feel I know her better and understand some of the things she has been through a whole lot better than if she hadn’t written it, and if I hadn’t read it. But the book does not define our relationship.

It is the same with God. I would have very hard time understanding who He is if I did not read and study the Bible. But a relationship is different. I must spend quality time with Him and share my life with Him in a significant way while living it in such a way as to please Him and bring glory to Him in the end.

A number of years ago a friend told me that he was having a hard time finding a church he liked. He pointed out that some groups loved the Bible, but didn’t know God; and that others loved God but didn’t know the Bible. Since then I have sensed a lot of validity to that observation. It seems odd that there is such an either/or situation.

It is a puzzle that some of the most Godly people I know don’t seem to know all that much about scripture and that some of the most knowledgeable people on the Bible, display very little love or compassion for others.

I have tried to keep a balance, learning about God through the studying the Bible, but at the same time, not becoming so hung up on study that I miss God and His purposes in the process.

Firefox

2009-08-14T10:47:00.002-05:00

A while back I was talking with a web designer who assured me that everyone uses Mozilla Firefox as their primary browser and that I should optimize my site for that browser. According to him, Internet Explorer was blasé and I could pretty much ignore it.

I am often reminded by my Mac friends that everyone important uses Macs and to stop fussing with Windows.

I did a little research, which is quite easy to do, and determined that 8% of people accessing my sites use Firefox. Over 90% use some form of Internet Explorer. Also, about 7% of the total are Mac users.

With over 90% of the people using Windows and Internet Explorer, this reminds me to always take other people’s opinions with a grain of salt. It also reminds me to be careful about the opinions I express when the facts are easily verified.

Since then I have downloaded Firefox and have found that it has a few advantages. Internet Explorer also has some advantages and I find myself switching back and forth depending upon the situation. They are both just tools and there is no universal tool. The more tools you have in your tool box and the more you know when to use them the better.

Three points to remember: don’t believe everything you hear, use all the tools that are available, and don’t get stuck with only one approach.

Road Trip

2009-08-10T09:07:00.001-05:00

Main Street - Eldorado, TX

This weekend we dusted off my wife’s Cadillac and made a road-trip to deep in the heart of Texas. My wife has a long lost cousin who lives just under the “X” in west Texas. We drove to Wichita Falls, Texas Friday and then on down to Eldorado on Saturday. We returned home to Kansas City on Sunday, so it was a quick trip.

It was good to get some “windshield time,” to talk and listen to music. The Cadillac purred along and turned in 27 mpg at Oklahoma’s 75 mph speed limit.

We are, however, slow learners when it comes to Holiday Inn food. Of all the times we have walked out of a restaurant because we couldn’t get waited on, or our food never came, 100% of the time it has been at a Holiday Inn. This was another time. We lost an hour waiting for breakfast before we gave up, walked out, and stopped at a 7-11 for muffins. We considered stopping on the way back to see if our food was ready, but we passed.

We had a good visit with Louise’s cousin, learning that they had spent the past 30 travelling almost continually. We couldn’t think of anyplace we had been that they hadn’t been twice, and they have been a whole bunch of places we hadn’t. He moved to Texas as a petroleum engineer, and there are still a few oil wells around.

Eldorado is the only town in the county and there isn’t much there. There are a few cows, but mainly goats. The land is so barren that cactus and mesquite is the main scenery.

Since we take turns driving, 1600 miles in two and half days is no big deal. In fact, this trip reminded us of how much we like to just get out on the road and see what we can see.

God's Faithfulness

2009-08-02T19:00:00.001-05:00

For several years I have felt that I was being obedient and faithful to God but He was not returning the favor. I prayed and tried to do what God was calling me to do, but the fruit of my labors just weren’t what I was expecting. Everything was too hard with minimal results.

When I expressed my frustrations to my wife she suggested that we sit down and write out some of the ways God has been faithful over the past ten years or so. Specifically she suggested that I list everything that has happened that was apparently God working in my life, things that I had no obvious control over.

As the list grew to about ten things, I saw the obvious pattern. Nine out of ten cases involved people and relationships. The vast majority of instances where I saw God working in my life involved Him bringing people to me that I didn’t expect. He brought new friends in unusual ways, He brought people that would solve problems, and He brought people who would encourage and teach me at just the right time.

My frustration with God, in every instance involved material items; things that I knew were only temporary in nature. His work involved permanent things like people, relationships, and truth.

I knew that God’s priorities were people and that material things are only secondary at best. God will provide all our needs, but I was still expecting to be rewarded with luxuries and the result was frustration.

The long list of wonderful people in my life makes me embarrassed that I ever doubted God’s love and faithfulness to me.

Customer Service - Part 2

2009-06-14T19:54:00.003-05:00

I was thinking more about our conflict with the telephone installer yesterday. I believe that it comes down to a culture clash - corporate vs entrepreneur point of view.

His attitude was that he didn't cause the problem, AT&T didn't cause the problem, therefore it was not a problem. Fixing the problem may or may not have been in his job description.

My attitude was - our phone dosen't work - we need to fix it. I don't care who we blame, but there is no other choice, no plan B, we need a working telephone.

It became a battle of the wills and since the phone now works, guess who won. But in all fairness, if you work for a big corporation where there is always someone else to pass the buck to, solving someone elses problem on a Saturday morning is not going to be high on your priority list.

My background as a business owner is that there is no one to pass the blame to, so problems are solved no matter what it takes or whose fault it is. Period.

In this case there were several possible solutions. Completely rewiring the apartment with new phone jacks was one solution, but when we narrowed the problem to an open circuit in a ten foot area and he would still not wire around the problem, I knew I was going to have to force him to find the problem. Total time 90 minutes, and he said it was the most difficult problem he ever had. I wish all my problems could be solved in ninety minutes.

Customer Service

2009-06-13T14:11:00.001-05:00

My mother now has a telephone in her bedroom. This may not sound like a major accomplishment, but it was. You see she had just moved, and having spent two hours on the phone, and having to wait a week, she was in no mood for the installer to tell her that she would not be able to have a phone because there was a problem with the wiring in the building.

I called and made an appointment for the installer to return, confident that we could solve the problem. I would like to know what he was thinking, and whether he really feared for his life when my wife, my mother, and I surrounded him and assured him that he was not leaving until we had a working telephone.

I remembered a story about my former employer who had just bought a new furnace. A few weeks later, on the coldest day of the year, it quit. A repairman came out, took a look, and said he would be back the next day. My boss, pulled a Colt 45 from a drawer, and laid it on the table and said, “If I’m freezing, you are too.” The furnace was repaired within the hour.

I didn’t have to stoop to that, but it did cross my mind. After a few more threats and with my help, the problem was solved with the phones working within about an hour and a half.

This situation was complicated by the fact that my mother worked for SW Bell for 40 years retiring about 20 years ago. She knows that people would have got called on the carpet and probably fired for things that are now standard operating procedures. Things like putting a customer on hold for thirty-minutes or an installer telling a customer that a wiring issue was an insurmountable problem, would have resulted in dismissal forty years ago. Times have changed.

Having suffered through 10 years of dealing with Sprint, I was ready for anything, but long time AT&T people are still getting used to lousy service.

William Henry Fox Talbot

2009-04-29T10:14:00.001-05:00

I’ve been reading the biography of William Henry Fox Talbot. Talbot was one of the inventors of photography and the prime proponent of the negative/positive process. He was an Englishman who lived between 1800 and 1870. During that time he had many accomplishments. Besides being a wealthy land owner and Member of Parliament, he invented the halftone process and published the first book illustrated with photographs. He was also a noted mathematician.

The biographer noted, almost in passing, at how much some people of that era were able to accomplish, especially considering that they lacked many things considered essential to modern society.

It seems that part of the answer is that modern society has reduced our ability to focus our attention on any one thing for very long. Over the years our attention span has been reduced. Personally, I have noticed in the past few years, I become restless after even a few minutes of concentration. I am always checking my email, getting up for a cup of coffee, or discovering a mindless task that needs to be done. Being able to sit down and work on a single task for hours at a time has become very difficult.

Talbot didn’t have email to check every few minutes or a telephone to interrupt his thoughts. He didn’t spend his evenings watching television. He didn’t have to maintain his Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn accounts. I am pretty certain that he didn’t follow anybody’s “tweets.” Times were slower, which meant he could spend hours, or days, working on complicated problems without distraction.

Today being able to multi-task is considered an asset. Multi-tasking really means not giving 100% attention to anything. Most of us are trying to do too many things and running in too many directions to give much attention to any one thing.

A few years ago I decided to define myself as a photographer, musician, and writer. What that really means is that I am not a gardener, golfer, or woodworker. By limiting my activities, I believe I have the ability to achieve more in a few specific areas.

Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as working for the Lord not men.” To me, heartily or “with all your heart” means to give it all you’ve got. Don’t be distracted.

I understand that the Japanese have a word “muda” which generally means unproductive or simply, a waste of time. Of course, sometimes we don’t know when we are wasting time. Is spending an afternoon on the golf course a waste of time? What if it was with an important client? What if you were a golf pro and a few more hours of practice would mean more money in your pocket?

Playing music might be a waste of time for some people, but since God gave me a passion for music, not practicing would be disobedient, and probably seen by God as squandering a gift. Figuring out who were are, how God made us, and what our purpose in life is, goes a long way in helping see the best use of our time.

Vandals

2009-04-15T15:04:00.003-05:00

For the second time in three months, while setting in my usual parking place in front of my apartment, my car was vandalized - at a cost of $2,000 each time.

I can understand why someone on drugs might hold up a convenience store to get money for a hit. Or why a desperate person might try to rob a bank. I can even understand how someone might resort to violence in a fit of anger, but to intentionally damage someone else’s property as entertainment takes a particularly sick mind.

Personally, I would recommend drug treatment programs for druggies, or job training for people who think stealing is the only way to get money, but vandalism reeks of an illness in the culture that is far deeper. It is not related to poverty, greed, or substance abuse like so much crime is. There is nothing to be gained by the perpetrator except the knowledge that they have caused harm to someone else or someone else’s property.

A psychologist might look for a diagnosis of mental illness which is somehow the opposite of compassion. Learning to feel somebody else’s pain is a learned experience and somewhere along the line, this can get corrupted to the opposite where a person might get pleasure from someone else’s pain. Sociologists might look to society and see a person crying out for attention, and doing so in a very juvenile way of striking out at random. As a Christian, I see it as a sign that Satan is still in control of this planet and that my home is in heaven, and that I will be required to deal with evil as long as I am still on Earth.

However you view it, it means we’ve got a problem. I have to admit that my first reaction was to electrify my car with high voltage so if anybody touched it with a metal object, they would be knocked on their keester. This is doable and could probably be made to only react to a metal object on bare metal, not a casual brush by. A car alarm might be a more practically choice, but I hate those things going off accidentally and a blaring horn doesn’t quite have the satisfaction of knowing a vandal tazered himself while attacking my car. My insurance company may have better suggestions.

Obviously none of these are good solutions when the root problem is a sick society that encourages violence through media and video games and does little to teach respect for property. Moreover, how can we continually teach young people that they descended from apes and then expect them to behave like humans? Did I mention that this world is not my home?

The Red Cadillac

2009-04-13T15:06:00.002-05:00

When I was seventeen and preparing to leave for college, I needed a different car. It was 1966 and a local car dealer had a couple of good choices. There were two solid low mileage cars in my price range. One was a gray 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88. The other was a red ’57 Cadillac Coupe deVille. My father strongly suggested that I buy the Olds. Since it was mainly his money, I did.

The Oldsmobile got me through a year or two of college, and it would be another 25 years before I would get my first Cadillac. There is hardly a month goes by that I don’t remember the way I felt when I saw that red Coupe deVille sitting on that used car lot. I wonder if my life would have been different if had showed up at college in a red Cadillac instead of a gray Oldsmobile. I am sure that it would have been much different – how I am not sure.

With 1957 Cadillacs selling in the $50K range and red Coupe deVilles being among the most desirable, that is one of several pieces of bad advice my dad gave me. It was right up there with “always clean up your plate.”

Of course, if I had bought the Cadillac then, it would have been long gone and I would be regretting having sold it, like so many other cool things I used to have.

An interviewer once told a famous race car driver/collector, “If you still owned all the cars you’ve had, you’d be very rich.” The response was, “No, if I’d been rich, I would have kept all the cars I’ve owned.”

The reality is that it takes a lot of time and money to maintain an old car, just like it does all of our personal property. And in the end it will be rust. You don’t see many ’57 Cadillac any more, or ’67, ’77, ‘87’s for that matter. They were made to be driven, used-up, and replaced, which is exactly what happened.

Putting our trust in temporary material items is the very definition of our materialistic society. Peace and contentment comes only from placing our trust in the God that created us, not in the things that we created ourselves.

Bethany Medical Center

2009-02-10T10:56:00.002-06:00

My first commercial customer, when I first started in the photography business in 1973, was Bethany Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. I started out processing High Contrast Copy Film for making slides from X-Rays, but soon began photographing employees, doctors, banquets, and even surgery. Bethany was very advanced in those days, having developed CPR and the world’s first coronary care unit. The term “Code Blue” came from Bethany.

While working with Bethany I had the privilege of photographing some very early open heart surgery. When Bethany Medical Center got one of the first CT Scanners in the Mid-west I was there to photograph its installation.

This week I was in the area and drove by 51 North 12th. There is no sign that there was ever a hospital there. I distinctively remember the beautiful buildings and photographing the construction photos of the multi-level parking garage where there is now just dirt and grass.

Bethany was the victim of an idiotic health care system, one of the worst among industrialized nations, where they were unable to survive because they had too many uninsured patients. In other words, by providing essential high-quality care in an underserved area, they went bankrupt. What a waste of resources, talent, and money.

Oddly the junkie houses that surrounded the hospital thirty years ago are still there and appear to be unchanged. Driving through the neighborhood I felt a sense of despair remembering the hope and excitement that surrounded this hospital not that many years ago.

The nine acre lot sold for $50,000 not long ago to a non-profit that hopes to build a senior living center, but so far, it remains an empty lot.

Relationships

2008-11-12T09:54:00.001-06:00

I found out very early in my business career that business, like everything else in life, is all about relationships. When I first started in the photography business in 1973, an older gentleman named Elgin Smith took me under his wing and introduced me to people I needed to know.

Since that day I have seldom done business with anyone other than friends. I believe that friendship, or the potential for friendship, is the first priority. It is all about whom you know and who knows you.

I am a member of the Overland Park and Leawood Chambers of Commerce and other organizations primarily to meet new people and figure out who I want to do business with and count as my friends.

It has been said that your best friends are those that bring out the best in you. Looking for people who can encourage me, who I can learn from, and want the best for themselves and those around them are pretty good criteria for new relationships.

I have learned that being a person that people want to hang out with is far more important than specific skills. In music, the musicians that get the best jobs are not necessarily the ones with the best chops, but rather, the ones that other people want to be with. The same is true to varying degrees in other professions as well.

I send out a weekly newsletter via email. I think it is good marketing, but more importantly, the responses tell me who I might want to do business with. If somebody isn’t interested in what I am doing, I probably won’t be interested in doing business with them either. That seems pretty straight forward to me.

If you want friends, be a friend. If you want people to be interested in you, be interested in them.

Eight years and three crises ago

2008-10-30T12:03:00.003-05:00

With the election looming, I thought I would give a little bit of perspective on the past eight years without endorsing either candidate.

When George W. Bush came to office he faced at least three major issues. First there was a small bunch of terrorists living in the mountains 10,000 miles away that wanted to kill Americans. Second, there was an education crisis looming with an increasing number of people dropping out of high school. Very soon large percentages of the population would be unemployable and on welfare. Third, there was a debt crisis. Millions of people were in debt up to their eyeballs with overextended mortgages and credit cards. This would sooner or later cause a credit crash, causing many banks and financial institutions to fail, resulting in economic disaster.

September 11, 2001 proved that the terrorist had the will and ability to carry out their threats. The Clinton administration had already identified Bin Laden as the leader but failed to act on his threats. Out of retaliation as much as anything, we are now involved in two expensive and drawn out wars.

“No child Left Behind” was enacted to try to stem the tide of high school dropouts, but has had questionable success because the problem is a culture issue not lack of money or testing.

Republicans tried unsuccessfully to regulate the mortgage industry fearing massive bank failures if subprime and freewheeling mortgage markets continued unabated, but the Democratic congress didn’t want anything that would making it harder for low or middle income people to buy a house or have easy access to credit, so nothing was done.

Here we are: the credit crisis happened, largely due to a Democratic Congress, but the Republicans didn’t really help either. The high school dropout rate is higher than ever which nobody seems to have any good answers or is even addressing. Wars continue that we should have never been involved with in the first place and we have done nothing to try to convince the terrorists that they need to reconsider their agenda.

I don’t see a lot of answer for these questions from either party. Just my opinion.

Learners vs learned

2008-09-29T09:52:00.001-05:00

Photokina was last week. Photokina is the gigantic world’s fair of imaging held every other year in Cologne, Germany. In 2006, 162,000 people attended from 152 different countries. When my wife and I attended Photokina twenty years ago, there was no hint that the future of photography was anything but film and chemistry.

At the time, I was one of the country’s experts on what is now an archaic technology, black and white film and black and white printing. But things change. The news out of Cologne is the reinvention of photography. Everything is different.

The reason I am back in photography after a twelve year hiatus is that everything is new and exciting. The quality and versatility we are getting from digital photography makes film and chemistry seem like ancient times, yet there are always those that hang onto the past. These are the learned people, the experts on the old ways of doing things.

“Learned” people are perfectly suited for the last generation. “Learners” are the ones ready to move ahead with the next generation. This has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible says that it is foolish to long for the old days. The wise look to the future.

I find myself getting excited on Sunday nights because I realize I get to go to work the next day and do some cool stuff. This may not mean I am wise, but I think it does put me in the minority. It seems like a majority of people are just putting in their time waiting for Social Security to kick in. Their creativity was squeezed out of them in grade school and then the corporation put them in a box. The next step is for the undertaker to drive the nails in the box.

Those who are learners are always looking for new ideas, and new ways of doing things. They are excited about the prospects of the future. They read, look around, and listen to what others are saying. That’s the group I want to be part of. I think Photokina 2010 is calling me.

Six Blocks

2008-08-29T15:32:00.001-05:00

For several years my wife and I lived near 47th and Oak in Kansas City, Missouri. I would often go out for walks. If I walked three blocks to the west I would pass Mercedes and Porches along the curb. If I walked three blocks east, I would pass old sofas and refrigerators along the curb.

The contrast could not be more startling. Without leaving my zip code, I could see people in the highest social-economic and the lowest social-economic situations. Within in a few blocks there were people who appeared to be completely oblivious to the other group’s situation; and they certainly didn’t understand each other.

To the impartial observer like me, who cannot really relate to either group, it is clearly not a matter of opportunity in the geographical sense, but possibly lack of opportunity in the culture sense.

If your culture says that talking to the police makes you a snitch, you will live in a high crime neighborhood. If your culture tells you that excelling in school makes you uncool, you will have no education. If your culture tells you that having to be at work at 8:00 takes away your freedom, you will not have job.

If your culture tells you that dropping 100 grand on a car makes you important, you will do whatever it takes to get the wheels. If your culture tells you that a 10,000 square foot house is the definition of success, you will sacrifice your friends to get it.

Jesus came to free the captives from this culture of poverty and also from the culture of more is better. As Christians we need to find ways to point people to the truth that there is a better way to live.

To change the culture, don’t write laws – write songs.

Handing off the baton

2008-08-25T14:03:00.001-05:00

I enjoyed watching the Olympics this year. One of the tragedies was watching both the men and women’s 4X100 relay teams drop the baton.

Anybody who has ever participated in a track meet in high school knows that handing off the baton is the most basic and fundamental skill in relay running. How could Olympic level runners drop the baton – twice.

The answer is actually pretty simple, they didn’t practice. The relay teams were all-star teams, meaning they were all the best in their category, but had never really worked together. Just because you put the best people together does not mean that you are going to have a smooth-running team. You see this all the time. Top executives that drive the business in the ground, good politicians that do dumb things, and so-called super-groups made up of great musicians that can’t play together.

Team work is very underrated as we saw on the USA relay teams. Working well with others, understanding your role, and letting others do theirs is fundamental. In more ways than one we drop the baton. We fail to communicate, and we fail to see how we fit in.

We are all given different gifts, different personalities, and different opportunities. Understanding how we fit and handing off the baton at the right time without dropping it is a key to successful living.

Architecture Photography

2008-08-19T14:17:00.002-05:00

Back in the Golden Age of rock & roll, when gas was cheap and phones were hard-wired, I roomed with a couple of architectural students. We were all photographers too, so naturally our late night bull-sessions centered around architecture and photography. Of course I became interested in architecture as well, as we made road trips to photography historical and significant buildings. I even took some History of Architecture classes and collected books on architecture. I have since seen and photographed even more famous buildings in Europe and the U.S. of A.

My friends went on to have successful careers as architects and designers while I stayed with photography.

Now days, when I am not photographing business people and performers, I am usually out photographing buildings.

The difference between photographing people and buildings is that with people portraiture, you move the people and the lights until you get the picture you want. In building portraiture, neither the buildings nor the sun are easily moveable, so we have to go when the sun and the building are where we want them to be. This is usually the first few hours after sunrise or the last few hours before sunset, depending upon the orientation of the building and the time of year.
The other rule of architectural photography is no converging vertical lines. The edges of the building and all vertical features should be parallel to each other and to the edge of the photo.

Do you need architectural photography? Give me a call. If you want to photograph some buildings yourself, I hope these tips are useful. Jim Mathis 913 269-6709

Dragon Eyes

2008-08-05T13:24:00.000-05:00

Everybody has seen the bright red eyes that sometime show up in flash pictures. Red-eye first reared its ugly head with the Kodak Pocket Instamatic of 1973. Poor design put the flash directly over the lens where the flash could reflect directly off the subject’s retina and back to the film.
Red-eye is now more common than ever as camera manufactures keep putting the flash head too close to the lens. Often the size of the camera gives them little choice. The problem can be solved in several ways.

1. Don’t use on-camera flash. Use natural light or off-camera flash.
2. Make sure there is enough room light that the subject’s pupils are not wide open.
3. Pre-fire the flash so that the subject’s pupils close before the actually picture is taken (this is a very-odd but common solution provided by many camera manufactures.)
4. Retouch out the red later. (This is far easier with digital than with film.)

Professional photographers seldom have problem with red-eye because we seldom use on-camera flash except as a fill. And red-eye was not an issue before 1973 because until then it was not possible to get the flash so close to the lens axis that it would cause a problem.

So that’s the story on red-eye. I hope this will help you tame this ugly dragon.

Panoramics

2008-07-17T09:20:00.002-05:00

We have become so accustomed to seeing the world through predetermined shapes that we forget that there are no preset shapes in art. We are used to the format of a television set or a magazine page and assume that our photographs should be 8X10 or 4x6 inches or whatever.

Photographs can be round, oval, or about any shape you like. I have always been drawn to long skinny pictures myself, and began using extreme wide-angle cameras about thirty years ago.
The next time you are trying to see something in a new way, forget about the 3:4 ratio box and think about a long box.

My primary business is people pictures, but I am also one of the few photographers with a lot of experience and affinity for panoramics. My definition of panoramic is a view greater than what the human eye can see, which is about 90 degrees.

Last roll

2008-06-30T16:28:00.001-05:00

While sorting through some old files last night I came across some negatives and a contact sheet dated April 2003. I believe that is the last roll of film I shot. I had been alternating between film and digital depending upon the situation, but that was the last roll of 120 Vericolor. Just this morning I dropped 10 rolls of Kodak Professional film and a roll of Fuji in the trash. The film era is officially over as far as I am concerned.

The photographs I am making now are the best I have ever done and I am enjoying it more. The newest digital cameras are amazing. The prices range from $19.95 to over $33,000 which means there is a pretty good variety of cameras out there – just like there has always been.

I’ve heard a few people lament about how much time it takes to correct and print digital images using a computer, but these people obviously never worked in a darkroom. Having owned a custom photo lab for 23 years, I am sure that the vast majority of people had no idea of the work the photo lab put into making their photos look good - or more correctly, how easy it was to make them look bad.

Photoshop has dramatically changed the way I work, but it has not changed the way I see. That is the secret of photography. Ansel Adams said, “The sheer ease of making an image often leads to creative disaster.” That is more true than ever.

Ted Hubbard

2008-06-27T10:12:00.001-05:00

A good friend died and went to be with the Lord this week. Ted Hubbard was an attorney and judge in London, England and quite possibly the wisest person I’ve ever known.

I met Ted and his wife, Gladys, through CBMC (Christian Business Men’s Committee.) When I joined the staff of CBMC in 1996, Ted held the title of “Staff Chaplain.” Four times a year Ted and Gladys would come to the United States at their own expense. They would go wherever in the U.S. they were invited and counsel , advice, hang-out, befriend, and whatever seemed appropriate at the time. The first time we got to know the Hubbards was when they road with us back from Colorado Springs to Kansas City. At the time they were in their upper seventies, British proper, and quite content to ride in the back of our GMC Jimmy the 600+ miles across Kansas. We all had a wonderful time.

It was Ted that advised us to take a long view and not make any major changes in the ministry for at least five years. That five years of talking to people, research, and planning eventually led to the opening of Homer’s Coffee House which has been a life-changing adventure for many people.

We were never able to visit Ted and Gladys in England, but saw pictures of their house in Kent and the one near the English shore. We heard about his Austin Princess and their lovely daughters.

I can’t imagine how many lives have been touched and people encouraged by this great man of God.

Travel

2008-06-19T11:41:00.002-05:00

My Dad used to accuse my Mother and me of having the “Go Bug.” That is one of the things that drew my wife and I together. We both have a strong desire to see the world. We decided early in our married life that we would spend our money on travel and not on houses or other expensive hobbies.

The result is that after 37 years of marriage we have been to many interesting places and have closets full of pictures and our minds full of memories to prove it.

The seven years that we spent running Homer’s Coffee House were wonderful but confining. We can’t wait to hit the road to see what is out there to see.

One of the benefits of travel is that we develop a different view of the world. Confined to our own limited culture we begin to think that what is around us is normal. For example, many Americans are unaware that even though the pursuit of happiness is written into our Declaration of Independence, we are only average among the world’s nations in “happiness” surveys. According to a recent article on “60 Minutes” that very pursuit may make us unhappy. Lack of contentment is a very real cause of misery. The “happiest” people in the world are Danes even though their taxes are high by U.S. standards and they pay about $10 per gallon for gas. They drive less, drive smaller cars, and many things that are very expensive here such as health care and college are free in Denmark. But most of all, the Danes are a contented lot. They are very happy with who they are.

Seeing other parts of the world, and getting to know people from different countries is very enlightening. People who go on mission trips, student exchange programs, or otherwise develop friendships across continents, are never the same.

With airlines getting more difficult to deal with and gasoline over the $4 mark, many people are cutting back their travel plans. Don’t do it. Get out there and see America and the world. Higher cost might affect your style. We will probably find cheaper hotels, shop for airfare deals, or rent a smaller car. I expect that higher costs will cause us to have more road side picnics and fewer gourmet meals. But they won’t cause us to stay home.

Big Changes

2008-06-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

This has been a month of big changes. My last official day at Homer’s Coffee House will be June 13. I have opened a photography studio at 10851 Mastin Suite 130, Overland Park, KS 66210. This is in Corporate Woods – the most prestigious office park in Kansas City.

I have been a photographer since I was in the fourth grade and it is really the only thing I ever made any money at, although I did work my way through college playing music. I came out of college debt free due to my ability to play the bass guitar, so that makes me a certified professional musician and a professional photographer.

As I approach sixty, I decided it was time to open my “dream” studio, and this may be it. I have been photographing my favorite people – musicians – since I first picked up a camera. I have photographed Sonny & Cher and Harry Chapin if that gives you an idea of how long I have been doing this. It is still fun and I intend to establish myself in the coming months in the Corporate Woods as a people photographer for executives, businesses, as well as performers.

I will be posting recent photos on www.MathisPhoto.net, so take a look and give me a call.

Friends

2008-04-21T11:19:00.001-05:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about friendships. The problem is that there are not enough good words to describe the range of positive relationships. The two most common are “friends” and “acquaintances.”

There are people I have known for many years, that I have a great deal of respect for, that are much for than acquaintances, but if I call them “friends,” what do I call the people that I see often and have many shared experiences and shared interests? Best friends or BFFL (best friend for life) seems sort of trite.

The basic building blocks of relationships are shared experiences and shared interests. Obviously, these vary a lot from relationship to relationship. My closest friends are the people I play music with. Music speaks directly to the heart, so playing music together builds strong relationships through shared experiences, shared passions, and strong emotions. Other musicians are also among my good friends because we have a common language and shared interest. I presume people who play golf together, go hunting together, or ride motorcycles together have similar relationships.

I once asked a fellow musician if she had any good friends that had never heard her play. Her answer was one that that I have not recovered from yet. She said, “I have chosen to give my life to making music, if a friend has never even bothered to come hear me play, they wouldn’t be much of a friend.”

Along those lines, if someone showed open disdain for the things you love, whether it is music, photography, or fishing, it would be hard to maintain much of a friendship. Two of my passions in life are music and photography. For me, photography is an individual pursuit, while music is a team sport. Therefore I don’t have as many photographer friends as musician friends. But if you have spent fifty years trying to make beautiful pictures and someone says to you, “How can you enjoy life with that thing (camera) in front of your face?” It becomes hard to call that person a friend. That doesn’t mean that we don’t occasionally hurt the people we are close to, often just trying to be funny, but we do have to know when to apologize and when to be sincere. The old movie said, “Love is never having to say you are sorry.” Actually, love is saying you are sorry a lot.

In a marriage relationship, we have to plan for shared experiences and shared interests. That is what makes a long term relationship possible. Other relationships are the same way. For friendships to be real, we have to share interests, share passions, and share experiences.

Watch your heart - and the press.

2008-02-23T10:39:00.000-06:00

Presidential candidate John McCain drew some flack this week from The New York Times for a presumed impropriety with a female lobbyist. I don’t know anything about John McCain’s personal life, but I do know that a person has to very careful with how things might look to others.

Thirty years ago my wife and I agreed that we would never be alone with a person of the opposite sex. This has been a good rule if at times a little difficult to maintain. This means that when meeting with friends, clients, or associates there may need to be three people there. If meeting with a female salesperson or associate, I always ask somebody else to come along, or else we meet in a very public place, such as a coffeehouse.

When my wife was on staff with a church, she never had one-on-one meetings except with other women. I have female friends, but I always make sure that either their husbands, my wife, or a third party is present when we talk.

I believe this plan came originally from Billy Graham. Billy and his wife have the same rule and it has served them well for decades.

This rule has served us well as well. Not only does this system prevent any appearance of impropriety, it also goes a long way in keeping our lives pure.

Big Ears

2008-02-12T16:10:00.000-06:00

My definition of a good musician is one that can play a wide variety of styles and genres. A person who likes a wide range of music we say has “big ears.” As musicians the best thing we can do is listen to all kinds of music.

My heroes are the people who can play in a blues band on Friday, sing a contemporary song at a wedding Saturday afternoon, play in a country band on Saturday night, and lead worship on Sunday morning.

The worst thing we can do is be publicly critical or condescending of a style of music that is not our favorite. I remember when the jazz musician, Stan Kenton, criticized country music. His stature as a musician dropped many points in many people’s eyes. I’ve heard country musicians make fun of hip-hop and vice versa. Please resist this temptation. It only makes you look uninformed or worse.

I was thinking of this while watching a little bit of the Grammy’s the other night. There were 110 Grammy’s given. Only a handful were presented on air, but the Grammy for best polka album or the best traditional folk album is just as important Song of the Year. And I didn’t hear anybody making fun of another genre. We are all in this together.

Empowering

2008-02-08T11:08:00.000-06:00

Louise and I were out of town for a few days. When we returned, I noticed a bar stool sitting in the back room. I was told that there were some screws loose. I quickly grabbed a screwdriver, tightened the screws and returned the stool to the counter.

It wasn’t until several minutes later that I realized that there is not one of our fifteen employees who are not capable of turning a screwdriver. When I related this incident to other small business owners, they all agreed that this is a common problem among entrepreneurs. We are so use to quickly solving problems that we have inadvertently trained our people to wait for us to solve their problems, no matter how small.

I realized that by not allowing, in fact insisting, that problems be solved by those present, I have made much more work for myself and stunted the growth of the business. This is probably why most start-ups need a new person to take the business to the next level. The entrepreneur is just not willing or able to hand over responsibility to others.

I would like to think that I have learned my lesson, but the truth is doing things myself is part of my make-up. “Empowering” others does not come easy.

There seem to be two types of people. Corporate types who can easily say, “That’s not MY job.” And entrepreneurs types who think everything is their job. It is hard to find a middle ground.

Music and Food

2008-01-28T12:36:00.000-06:00

Wake up in the middle of the night in a truck stop,
Stumble in the restaurant, wonderin’ why I don’t stop.
Steve Earle – Guitar Town

I don’t know about Earle, but I do it for the food. Jennifer Lynn Smith played Homer’s last weekend. After the gig, the inevitable question came up. What’s for breakfast? Even though Jennifer is a Prius driving folkie, I recommended Village Inn – the skillet breakfast with sausage and some Tabasco. It seemed like the perfect ending to a great night of good music. She agreed and off they went for a post gig feast.

Which brings up the question, does different genres require different food. We usually think of blues and barbeque, country and fried chicken, and folk and tofu. During my early rock and roll days, every gig was finished off with two eggs over easy, hash browns with ketchup, and toast. But I don’t know if the definitive study has been made. If anybody has a clear opinion on this let me know.

Artists and athletes

2008-01-06T19:59:00.000-06:00

I have always been a little concerned about calling a musician or a singer an artist as is the norm in the music business. But lately the term is beginning to make more sense. A performer is as much an artist as a painter or sculptor is in that sense that it is a form of creative self-expression and requires both skill and heart.

But singers, musicians, dancers, and actors are more than artists, they are also athletes. As athletes, they must train, practice, and rehearse to train their muscles to react instantly without thought. Also like athletes they may face injuries, health, and just plain getting old. But unlike in athletics, the creative side does not diminish with age. As we get older, we may not be able to play as fast, or hit the highest notes, but we can certainly play with more expression and passion as we have the gift of time behind us.

In the past it seemed like musical history was made by young people, but I am not sure that is the case now or will it be in the future. Creativity does not rely solely on flexible fingers and vocal cords. It takes clear thinking, a passion for life, and time and skill to get the art recorded in a form that others can enjoy it.

Send me a man who reads.

2007-12-17T10:48:00.000-06:00

When I was a child by family subscribed to “Reader’s Digest.” I was always the first one to grab it. The second thing I did was go through and read all the jokes. But the very first thing I read, even before all the jokes and cute stories, was an ongoing ad series by The International Paper Company. It was a series of biographies and vignettes about people and what they liked to read. The title and punch line was always “Send me a man who reads.” ( I understand that this series ran in several national magazines in 1960-61.)

The whole point of the series was that reading is the single most affective habit and the greatest skill we can possess. There is no greater predictor of success in life than how much and what a person reads.

I am constantly amazed at the amount of information available on virtually every subject. There are books, magazines, videos, conventions, conferences, trade organizations, and on-line forums on any and every thing a person can think of. The bottom line is this: there is no excuse for ignorance.

For a Christian, primary reading should be the Bible, but after that the possibilities seem endless. The Bible has inspired more writing than any other subject in history. There are commentaries, study guides, insights, and opinions on anything a person would ever need to know.

But reading other subjects is also worthwhile. I would not consider any major endeavor without first reading everything I can find on the subject. Before we opened Homer’s Coffee House, I read six or seven books about coffee for example. I am constantly amazed by people who have very limited knowledge about an activity that they are deeply involved with, when all they need to do visit the library or a bookstore and find tons of literature about the subject.

It’s simple – “just send me a person who reads.”

There is a lion in the street!

2007-12-12T10:56:00.000-06:00

Ever since I have been involved in retail, I have been trying to figure out the relationship between the weather and the amount of customers. This week I finally figured it out.

The weather has very little effect on business, but the weather forecast has a lot. Monday and Tuesday the television news was filled with gloom and doom – we are all going to die – news of an impending ice storm. Throughout those days we had steady rain, but the temperature remained near or above freezing with little to no ice on the streets. Business was down by 50%. (Other areas did fair worse, but our city dodged the ice.)

Finally the fear mongers got tired, the temperature dropped into the 20’s, and today with icy streets, business is back to normal. Would somebody like to explain this to me?

Proverbs 22:13 says, “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside!’ or, ‘I will be murdered in the streets!’” Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.”

The victory belongs to the ones who are willing to go out and face the world, not huddle in front of their TV’s hearing about how bad things are. This applies not just to the weather, but in every other situation as well.

Jumping to Conclusions

2007-11-13T15:29:00.000-06:00

The other day, two ladies were setting in the window at Homer’s. I asked if they needed anything else and one committed on the neighborhood being rather shabby. (Keep in mind that we are in one of the top 5 or 6 counties in the nation in per capita income.) I asked why she thought that and she said, because they had been setting there for over an hour and had not seen a single cab go by. I asked where they were from and she said Detroit. I presume there are neighborhoods where the taxi drivers don’t want to go in Detroit.

I decided to not explain that everybody in Overland Park has 2.3 cars and there isn’t much need for taxis. I also didn’t point out that the taxis we do have are unmarked Lincoln Town Cars. I volunteered to call them a cab, and sure enough when the cab arrived it was a silver, unmarked Lincoln.

A few days later a young man asked me what nationality I was. He was amazed when I told him that I was an American and, in fact, had lived in Kansas my whole life. He said he was quite surprised because I had a deep voice and American’s have high pitched voices. As near as I could tell he was an American. I don’t know where he had been.

This week a well-dressed man came in asked us to steam some milk, pull a double shot of espresso, and then pour the steamed milk over the espresso. I wrote “latte” on the ticket. He apparently he didn’t know that he had just described the most basic coffeehouse drink there is. I presume he also walks into McDonalds and asked them grind some beef, fry it on a grill, and put it in a bun, not realizing he had just described a hamburger.

It just keeps getting weirder out there folks.

Music, food, & drink

2007-10-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

Somebody has probably done a study on this, but there seems to be quite a difference in what the fans of different performers eat and drink. At Homer’s Coffee House, for example, some are a bit predictable and some are not.

It is not surprising that when Randy Davenport plays that we would sell a lot of brewed coffee and apple pie because he plays country with patriotic themes. More surprising is that Kenny Gamble fans would eat so much carrot cake.

I don’t know why Bob Jenkins fans drink decaf lattes. I don’t know if it is because Bob is stimulating enough without caffiene, or they just are planning on getting to bed early.

I would be surprised if the high energy guitar sounds of Sky Blue would bring in the soy drinkers. But soy and herb teas seem to fit The Subs just fine.

Mission Blues fans drink a lot of milk shakes. Maybe it is because they heat up the place.

Maybe I will do a more detailed survey. This may be a whole new branch of science.

Disposable vs reuseable

2007-10-20T10:05:00.000-05:00

It is a common misconception that young people are more environmentally conscience than older people. My experience shows the opposite to be true. College age and younger people are about ten times more likely to request disposable plates and cups than older people. But last night was still amazing.

Three young people (college age) came in and ordered pie. As I began to serve them pie on glass plates with stainless silverware, they asked if they could have them to go. I put the three pieces of pie in styrofoam boxes (which I hate to do), put them in a plastic bag and tossed in plastic forks. They paid the bill and immediately went over and sat down at a table, took out the boxes and began eating out of the styrofoam boxes with the plastic forks.

I went over and told them that I would be happy to put the pie on plates or give them "real" forks, but they said no, they were fine.

This is not that unusual. Eating out of plastic boxes is uncool enough, but the intentional waste of resources is inexuseable. With this sort of cavalier attitude toward single-use items, it is no wonder this country consumes far more than our share of natural resources.

Keep the main thing the main thing

2007-10-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

The new Sprint Center in downtown Kansas City opens this week; the same week that Gary Forsee lost his job as the head of Sprint. In addition to spending millions for naming rights for the new arena, Forsee oversaw the merger with Nextel and was well respected in community affairs circles.

Unfortunately he missed one little issue – Sprint telephones don’t work. I was one of the thousands who left Sprint for another carrier after years of frustration with weak signals, dropped calls, and just plain lousy sound quality. I now enjoy talking on the phone again since I can understand what the other person is saying and I don’t live in constant fear of missing calls or loosing the signal in mid-sentence.

The lesson here, for the rest of us, is simple. Remember to keep the main thing the main thing. Don’t get distracted by side issues while ignoring the basic product or service you are trying to provide.

The same is true in our personal lives. Our relationship with God and others is the main thing. It is easy to get caught up in less important issues.

Praising vs Performing

2007-10-01T11:50:00.000-05:00

I play in the Christian blues/rock band, “Sky Blue” in addition to my church’s praise band, so, I think a lot about the differences. The purpose, and therefore the focus, of the two are quite different. The purpose of the praise band is to lead worship, to help people see God more clearly. The focus is on the Lord. The purpose of the blues band is to entertain and the focus is on the audience. This results in some dramatic differences in the approach.

At church we do simple songs that the audience can sing along. We do not want to detract from the worship with either bad playing or virtuoso playing. We want the music to be transparent. The challenge is to keep the music from being a concert.

In Sky Blue the opposite is true. Even though a secondary goal is for people to see God more clearly, the primary focus is on the audience. We want them to know that Christians can have fun and make great music. We want them to go away thinking “What a great band!”

Two bands, two purposes, two approaches to performing – it can be a challenge to keep the two sorted out. Granted, it is easier for me because in Sky Blue I play a lead instrument and sing. In the church band, I play bass and don’t sing, so the two are dissimilar to my brain..

Most of the people reading this are probably in the same situations. What is your experience?

Bicycles

2007-09-12T11:27:00.001-05:00

The other day some friends stopped by for coffee in the middle of their bicycle ride. They commented that the two miles from their house was quite a ride. Since I have ridden over 100 miles in a day on more than one occasion, I was not too sympathetic. When they left I noticed that they were riding “Cruiser” bikes, the kind with fat tires, wide soft seats, flat handlebars, and not very many gears.

My bicycle is not exactly the newest technology, but it does have narrow tires to reduce rolling resistance, drop handle bars for better weight distribution and better aerodynamics, a narrow seat that is actually more comfortable in the long run, and 12-speeds for hills.

I figured there might be a life lesson here. Sometimes the comfortable way is not the best way. Like pedaling a heavy cushy bike compared to a light responsive bicycle, taking the easy way out may result in a lot less satisfaction in the end. God never intended for us to be comfortable all the time. He expects us to attack life with gusto. That Lazy-Boy chair and big screen TV may be barriers to a contented and satisfying life. We need to stretch ourselves and maybe go for what looks like a little discomfort. It may be that, like that dropped handlebar, skinny-tire bicycle; it is a whole lot more satisfying in the long run.

90 and going strong

2007-08-30T13:56:00.000-05:00

Today I attended a birthday celebration for a friend who turned 90. Bill was a pilot. He began flying DC-3’s for TWA in 1942. He met his wife her first day on the job as a flight attendant. They have been married 58 years.

In 1977, when the FAA said he was too old to fly passengers, he moved to Pakistan and then South America to keep flying. He returned to Kansas where he has been an encourager and an inspiration to thousands of people.

Bill never misses an opportunity to talk about his faith or about the great life God has given him. Because their life is filled with friends and vitality, you would never guess their age. Both Bill and Evelyn seem twenty years younger than the calendar indicates.

I often talk about the need to finish the race strong, and here are two people who are doing it.

Music Fans?

2007-08-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

At a music conference I attended a few months, one of the speakers committed that only about 10% of the population is music fans. I was surprised by this statement because I thought everyone (well, almost everyone) loved music. I quickly realized that this percentage depends a lot on your definition of "fan."

His definition of a music fan was simply someone who liked a wide variety of music, could listen to a song all the way through, could identify different instruments and styles of playing, and could recognize virtuoso playing when they heard it. It turns out that there are not as many people in this category as most musicians believe.

The speaker was a radio consultant – the type of person that record companies hire to try to get their records played on the radio. His comment was in response to a question about why radio stations play the same tedious, unimaginative, handful of songs over and over when there are tens of thousands of recordings released every year, most of them quite good. He was explaining that radio stations are not as dumb as they seem because the vast majority of people don’t want to hear anything new and most people have very limited taste when it comes to music – probably because they only listen to a handful of boring unimaginative songs over and over again.

This would explain why it is easier to get ten thousand people to pay $75 to go to an arena, where they can’t see or hear, to see a well known performer than it is to get one hundred people to go to a much more intimate setting, with great sound, to see a solid band for fraction of the cost.

I became aware of this year’s ago when I would invite friends over to listen to music – usually a new artist that I wanted to share. I always came away frustrated because before the first cut was through they would be talking over the music about something else. I quickly learned that not many of my friends were anywhere near as interested in music as I was. For the next twenty years, music became a very personal thing where I would discover new artist, buy their records, become fans, and never tell anybody else. Only recently have I developed friends with similar interests that I can share music ideas with.

I guess the point is: God made us all different. We each have our own interests and passions. I seldom watch a football game all the way through and I would have a great deal of difficulty telling the difference between one play to the next, or one position to another. I couldn’t tell you when deer season starts, but I know the difference between a Telecaster and a Stratocaster. Isn’t it great that God didn’t make us all the same?

Be careful who you hang with

2007-08-01T17:30:00.001-05:00

Homer’s Coffee House hosts an open mike jam session every Monday night during the summer. This is a time designed to promote community and give new or first-time performers a chance to play. At the same time it gives more established performers an opportunity to play songs that they might not normally do.

We just go around the circle and give everybody a chance to play and sing. The variety of people who show up each Monday is amazing. It is not unusual to have a person who has never sung in public before do a number followed by professional rock and roller singing a country or folk song. We never know what is going to happen.

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon. Some nights everybody sounds great, and other nights, it seems, everybody is struggling just to stay in tune. The reason, I believe, is that we are greatly influenced by those around us. If there are two or three people in a row who are having a hard time carrying a tune, the next person up, even if they are an experienced musician, is likely to struggle to stay on pitch. Conversely, a few good musicians elevate the whole group to do better.

I think this principle applies to other areas of life as well. If we surround ourselves with quality people, we are likely to perform better ourselves. The opposite is also true. If those around us are goof-offs and low-achievers, our own expectations are soon going to be diminished. This does not mean that we should totally avoid people we think are somehow “inferior,” but it does mean that we need to choose our friends wisely. It means that we need to be in a positive work environment if we want to accomplish great things.

Years ago, I played music with a guy whose favorite saying was, “Dumb is contagious.” Turns out that he was restating what the book of Proverbs says when it cautions us to not be companions of fools, but rather associate ourselves with people who will help us learn and grow.

Craftsman Part II

2007-07-21T10:18:00.000-05:00

A friend was in last week lamenting about the quality of workmanship from the people who had come to repair her apartment. I concurred about how hard it was to find people who knew how to do stuff. I wrote about that in this blog back on September 8. Then I pointed out that our educational system is upside down with the best students discouraged from learning a craft. This leaves us with the lowest performing people doing the most important work, like repairing cars and putting on roofs.

This is contrary to scripture where the Bible tells us to work with our hands and honor those who do. When God came to Earth as a man, He chose to do so as a craftsman – Jesus, the woodworker.

I was reminded this week that a big part of the problem is the way craftsman are portrayed in the media. I happened to be watching “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” The set-up was that this four year old was showing great promise as an appliance repairman. I thought they were going to show a four year old who had dismantled his mother’s washing machine or a kid with the vacuum cleaner in pieces on the floor. Instead they showed a little boy bent over with part of his behind showing. I wonder how many hundreds of young people decided not to be appliance repairing repairmen with that one clip. I know if I was a sixteen year old with plans to go to technical school, I would have reconsidered after seeing just that one ten-second clip.

What the video really showed was that TV producers consider themselves better than appliance repairmen. This is a premise I would seriously doubt.

Servanthood

2007-07-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

My mother and I just returned from an Alaskan cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean ship, “The Visions of the Sea.” It was a fun trip, but the thing that impressed me most was the crew.

There were 755 crew members from 51 different countries on board. Needless to say they came in all shapes and colors from many different backgrounds. The one thing they had in common was a servant’s heart. Along with that came a strong work ethic and a desire to please, not only the passengers, but each other.

We made an effort to get to know some of the crew and find out a little about them. Some were taking time off from college or right out of school, others were seasoned professionals, while I’m sure others just needed the money. But they honestly respected each other and worked hard to make the cruise a wonderful experience for everyone involved.

One of the crew members commented that the crew was like the United Nations except that here they actually liked each other. My observation is that at the U.N. the purpose is to defend your countries honor at all cost; on board ship, the purpose is to work together and get the job done. This makes a huge difference. I half jokingly suggested that we should fire the United Nations and give the job over to the crew of a cruise ship, after all most of the nations are well represented. I honestly believe that a solution could be found to most of the world’s problems within a few days.

Jesus talked a lot about being a servant. He emphasized the importance of having a servant’s heart and looking out for the other guy. As usual, we have the wrong people in places of authority. Usually, only those looking out for themselves make it to be leaders of their countries. Ambassadors are then giving the job of honoring their country and its leaders. Few have any desire or motivation to actually solve problems and help those in need.

Unfortunately, I didn’t encounter any ship crew members who wanted to go to the U.N., they would rather serve each other and their guests.

Simplicity

2007-06-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

Several years ago I was doing both still photography and video work. I decided to drop the video because it wasn’t that much fun. I later realized why. Still photography takes a slice of life and distills it down to a clean glimpse. It seeks it tell the story in a small rectangular slice of time. Video, on the other hand, adds chaos to an already busy world.

That is why I don’t watch television. When I get home, I have had enough sound, movement, and color for the day. I don’t need manufactured stimulus to distract me.

Simplicity is a concept that seems to get short changed a lot. I see many places where complication and layers of complexity are added with little reason. For example, since I have a background in sound systems, I pay attention to things like microphones and speakers. In many places, wireless mikes have replaced wired microphones, adding complexity and unreliability with little other benefit. Every sound guy knows that wired mikes sound better, have less noise issues, and cost a lot less than wireless. Why then do they spend hundreds of dollars on microphones, receivers, and batteries for a mike that spends its life on a stand?

Cars are another example. Hybrids are big news, but they are exceedingly complicated. In the long term, that means unreliable and expensive to repair. Diesel cars are simply by comparison, get similar mileage, and last several times longer. Yet diesels have been slow to catch on in the U.S., possibly because they are simple and don’t have the high-tech image of the hybrids.

The old adage K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple Stupid, has gone out of favor. We have added layers of complexity to even the simplest pleasures such as shopping for music and talking on the telephone. I believe our lives would be a lot better if we looked for simple solutions not the most complicated solutions. The Bible says to aspire to a simply life. I am not ready to join the Amish, but I think they make some good points. A simpler life is a better life.

Yes, there is a story.

2007-06-07T17:22:00.000-05:00

The other day couple of men were at the counter at Homer’s Coffee House. One of them picked up a copy of my book, “Saving the World, One Latte at a Time, The Story of Homer’s Coffee House.” He read the subtitle out loud and then declared, “You mean this place has a story?”

I didn’t say anything, but it sure struck me as odd. After all, every place and everybody has a story. In retrospect, that may have been the dumbest comment I’ve heard in months. Not everybody writes their story, but they certainly could. Certainly, everybody business has a long and interesting story. The hours, days, and years, of planning and sweat that make up even the most modest enterprise could easily fill a book.

Our lives are a story that we play out day by day. Our lives open like a book before us we play out our lives each step of the way.

Does this place have a story? Stories are written here everyday. People meet, get married, and start lives together before our eyes. Business deals are made and lives are changed over a cup of coffee.

I feel sorry for those poor saps who don’t see the stories, don’t know the stories, or are even surprised there is a story.

Life is Good

2007-05-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

I saw a car with both a “Life is Good” decal and “Darwin” emblem. I agree that life is good. I believe we need to protect life, cherish life, and live life in all its forms to the fullest extinct. But the “Life is Good” idea and the Darwin emblem are a big contradiction.

Life is good because a creator god created us and every living thing. He gave us each a place, a time, and a purpose. It is pleasing to God, and to ourselves as well, when we seek that purpose.

Darwinist believe that we are here as a result of some great accident of time and space. Therefore our only purpose is what we create for ourselves. It certainly takes a lot of brain work and self-searching to find a good life in that.

One of the characteristics of this post-modern generation is that they are comfortable with contradictions. They can readily accept opposite beliefs at the same time. Others of us have a hard time believing that there are such things as: jumbo shrimp, liquid gas, original copies, constructive criticism, military intelligence, and a just war.

Thin and Rich

2007-05-13T19:33:00.000-05:00

“You can be both rich and thin if you have self-control.” I think of that when I walk by the cookie case at Homer’s. The cookies seem to call louder than my desire to stay fit. Sometimes the cookies win, sometimes I win, but it is always a struggle. My favorite drink is still a milk shake. That wasn’t too bad back when I was six feet tall and 150 pounds. I am still six foot, but it has been a while since I saw 150, so I must limit the number of milk shakes I drink.

As for finances, the basic principle is spend less than you make. If we do that over time we will accumulate wealth. If we spend more than we make, we accumulate debt.

One of the fruits of the spirit from Galatians 5 is self-control. Self-control in our spending and self-control in our eating have clear long-term affects. The opposite of self-control is gluttony. Gluttony is a sin that has as much to do with over-consumption as it does with over-eating. We can over-consume in all kinds of areas from our houses and cars to the clothes we wear. Over-consumption is rampant in American society. Self-control is out-of-style.

I want to be thin and fit, have money in my pocket, and be a person known for self-control. They all go together.

Beauty

2007-05-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago The Washington Post ran an article about an experiment they ran. They asked world famous classical violinist, Joshua Bell, to play in the subway. He played a 45-minute concert of some of the world’s most beautiful music on a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin.

Only one person recognized him, and one other stopped to acknowledge that this was a superb music performance. The vast majority didn’t notice.

This does not surprise me at all. Every Friday and Saturday, during our concert times, people come into Homer’s Coffee House where I work, order their drinks and leave – having never even glanced at the stage.

Just about every week, somebody will comment to me about a magic moment on stage, a debut performance of a great song or a career best solo by a jazz artist, that had gone mostly unnoticed by the audience.

I don’t know what this means. It may indicate a lack of arts education in the schools, but it probably just means that we are too busy or too wrapped-up in our own affairs to pay attention to what is going on around us.

I describe myself as a musician, a photographer, and writer. What that really means is that I am an observer of life. I try to look for things of beauty around me. I might try to capture them with a camera, write about them, or show it to the world somehow through music. As a photographer it seems that my job is to look for beauty in God’s creation, and then force people to look at it by putting it in a box and hanging it on the wall.

I hope that if I heard great music in a subway station I would stop to listen – I have in the past. But I have probably missed a lot to.

God gave us beauty for our enjoyment. I believe we please Him when we take the time to do so.

Contentment

2007-04-23T18:24:00.000-05:00

I had the privilege Sunday to make my debut with my church praise band playing bass. I play pedal steel guitar with Sky Blue, and before that, Dobro with Electric Prairie, but it had been a while since I had my trusty bass out of the house.

I began playing bass in 1964 and bought my current bass new in 1970. It is a Gibson Les Paul and every time I play it I am reminded of how much I love that instrument. Every few years for the past 37, I have gone to a music store to look at new basses, and I have never seen one that matches the tone, beauty, or craftsmanship of my old Gibson.

Needless to say, I am very content with the bass. I began thinking of other things I have that I have no intention of ever replacing – either because I consider them perfect, or I like them just the way they are.

Number One – my wife, she’s perfect.
My car – a Volkswagen Passat. If it ever wears out, I will buy another just like it.
My Emmons pedal steel guitar.
The National Tri-cone pictured on my profile.
My cat – Bonnie (she’s purrr-fect too.)
Wrangler jeans.
The leather chair that we bought 35 years ago.
The JBL speakers sitting in my living room.

There are a lot more, but you get the idea.

The Bible says to be content with what you have. Don’t go striving after newer, bigger, flashier. Sure, we can make improvement in our lives, but being content with what we have is the basis for true joy and happiness.

My Rolex

2007-04-17T12:39:00.000-05:00

In 1976 I bought a used watch from a friend. It was a Rolex Daytona Cosmograph. I paid him $150 for it. I wore it everyday for the next half dozen years. During that time I spent about $600 to $700 keeping it running. This included sending it to Switzerland once for a clean and lube. It was becoming apparent that wearing an expensive watch everyday was not practical – a little like commuting in a Ferrari.

One day I was at a trade show in Chicago when a man offered me $1200 cash for the watch off my arm. I sold it to him on the spot and went to Dillards the next day and bought a Swatch for $50. I couldn’t have been happier. I loved the Rolex, but it was becoming a burden.

Paul Newman was photographed several times wearing a watch exactly like mine, and that model has since become known as the “Paul Newman Watch.”

Not long after that I began seeing ads wanting to buy Rolex Daytonas for $3,000 and up. The current book value is $17,000 with a recent auction high of $84,000.

Do I regret selling mine for $1200? Not at all. Sure, I would rather have $17,000 than $1,200, but, to me, a $17,000 watch would be a real burden. I could never wear it, and keeping it safe and in good working order would be a chore.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “Let us lay aside every weight…and run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Expensive watches, cars, or guitars are not bad things, but they can certainly weigh us down. I know people with cameras so expensive that they never take them out of the house, musical instruments so expensive that they never get played, and cars so expensive that they never get driven. I guess just knowing that you have them can bring pleasure, but to me they are burdens that keep us from life.

The watch that I wear now, I bought at a kiosk at Oak Park Mall. It is not a Rolex, but it works just fine and when it quits, I will throw it away and buy another one.

The Ability to Communicate

2007-04-11T14:33:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine, who happens to be a college professor, told me the other day that his definition, or the minimum requirement, of a Bachelors Degree is the ability to communicate. A person with four years of college should be able to communicate, both verbally and in writing, in a clear concise way. I had not really thought about it before, but that seems to make sense. If that is all we learn in the pursuit of a B.A. or B.S. degree, it has been worth it.

At Homer’s Coffee House, we can tell in less than ten seconds if an applicant is someone we want to hire. It is all in their communication skills. If a person speaks clearly, looks you in the eye, and speaks in complete sentences, they are in an elite group. Chances are if that is the case, they can write clearly as well.

The ability to speak and write clearly is a primary indicator of future success in life.

Jesus was a master communicator. He was able to attract thousands to hear his stories and teachings. He didn’t have a college degree, but clearly he understood the importance of being able to make his thoughts and ideas clear.

Speaking and writing doesn’t come naturally to most of us, but instead requires work, training, and practice. Understanding the importance of communication is a good first step in making your dreams and vision a reality.

Christian Independent Artists Conference

2007-04-02T21:18:00.000-05:00

From March 30 through April 1, Sunny Sundberg, Rob Robinson, (from Spirit's Wind) and I were in Nashville, Tennessee for the CIA Summit. (That is Christian Independent Artist, not Central Intelligence Agency.) The Summit is sponsored by Indieheaven, an organization for independent Christian musicians and performers.

The conference was a hit on three levels: entertaining, informational, and spiritually challenging. A common theme seemed to be calling or mission. Several times we heard the statement: “Do it for the mission and the provision will come.” Understand your vision or your purpose. Margaret Becker said, “If you don’t have a vision, someone will gladly provide you with one, and it will benefit them, not you.” If you know “the why” the “what” and “how” will follow.

To see photos and read the whole report, click here.

Why I Believe

2007-03-27T10:03:00.000-05:00

I believe that Jesus is God, that he came to earth in the form of a man and taught a lifestyle based on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I also believe that He is coming back some day, and that whether I am alive or dead, I will meet Him in the sky and live with Him forever in a place called heaven.

But I could be wrong. Jesus could be just a myth or at best a good teacher. If that is the case, I will have lived a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and when I die, I am dead – end of story.

But if I chose to not believe and I were right; my life would probably be characterized by greed, self-indulgence, and trying to find happiness the best way I could.

On the other hand if I chose not to believe in Jesus and I were wrong and Jesus really was God and everything He said was true; I would live life my own way and then on that judgment day sometime in the future, face an eternity in a terrible place usually called hell.

To me the choice is plain. I would rather believe Jesus and be wrong that not believe Him and be right.

Friends and Fans

2007-03-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

This morning I had breakfast with a group of men I see on a regular basis. As I walked in one of them said, “Hey, you look like Johnny Cash,” referring to my black pants and black jacket that I wear about 75% of the time. I laughed and commented that I like black. Another guy said, “If you could only sing like Johnny Cash, too.” I said, “Actually I hear that a lot,” thinking of the half a dozen people a week that say I sound like Cash. As the banter continued, I realized that none of the men in the room had ever heard me sing or even knew that I played in a band, even though I am sure I brought it up on several occasions.

Nobody there knew that I had sung “Big River” and “Folsom Prison Blues” to a packed house and cheers just three days before. I couldn’t think of a way to mention it without sounding like I was making something up or bragging, so I just let the subject drop.

The point is – most of us are multi-faceted and many areas of our lives don’t cross each other. I often ask musicians how many of their friends have heard them play. Surprisingly, the answer is often – not many. They often lament that their fans and friends are two different groups of people, making it very hard to talk about their music and musical accomplishments with their friends.

I don’t know the application to this story other than the fact that we often don’t know our friends very well. Our relationships are often superficial. It is very difficult for more than a small handful of people to know us well enough to know what we care about or what we think. It is difficult for us to know our friends and what they care about. But it is worth the effort. Everybody is worth knowing and worth finding out what makes them tick and what makes them come alive.

Forgiveness

2007-03-16T11:11:00.000-05:00

The news is full of sectarian and ethnic violence. In Africa, the Mid-East, and elsewhere, feuds and conflict that have been going on for generations, erupt at the slightest provocation. Despite many social injustices, this country has been relatively free of such conflicts. The reason is that we have a strong culture of forgiveness.

One of the solid Christian principles that has deep roots in American society is the concept of forgiveness. Sometimes it is not easy, but we know that we must forgive others, just has God can forgive us.

Like most Americans, I have an eclectic mix of ancestors. Some members of my distant family had their land stolen from them by order of the U.S. Supreme Court when gold was discovered on their land. The U.S. Army arrested them and forced them to walk from their ancestral homes in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia to Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way. They were Cherokee and the forced march is now called the “Trail of Tears.” The Cherokee were not savages but rather successful merchants, craftsman, and farmers. This was only about four generations ago, yet the Cherokee have forgiven the United States and are loyal US citizens.

Another part of my distant family came here in colonial days fleeing religious persecution in Europe. It is seldom mentioned that they were Evangelicals fleeing persecution by the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic controlled governments. That is what was on their minds when the establishment clause was written into the constitution. Evangelical Protestants and Catholics are both forgiving people and this is now considered ancient history.

More recently, my family members came here in search of jobs and land. They left impoverished situations in search of a better life, just as many still do today. Like today, they weren’t necessarily met with open arms. They had to work hard to prove themselves worthy to be called Americans.

Other people were kidnapped from their villages in Africa, put on ships heading to America and sold into slavery. Even though they were freed less than 150 years ago, forgiveness is the order of the day.

Without forgiveness, this country, too, would be embroiled in ethnic and sectarian violence. Just about everybody would have no trouble thinking of a “beef” against their neighbor.

The answer to world peace is easy – forgiveness. People must forgive each other for past atrocities, and keep on forgiving because we are going to keep on treating each other badly.

Square Watermelons

2007-03-10T10:17:00.000-06:00

My old High School buddy, Wayne Norton, now Dr. Wayne Norton of the First Baptist Church in Coffeyville, Kansas, reminded me of the square watermelons grown in Japan. It turns out that all you have to do is put the watermelons in a square box while they are growing and they will grow to the shape of the box. Pretty cool, huh?

Of course the same thing happens to people. Put us in a square box while we are growing and we take on the shape of the box. Any shaped box for that matter will shape us just as well. Most of us didn’t have the opportunity to decide the type of “box” we grew up in, but since we continue to grow our whole lives, we can change boxes whenever we want.

The box may be our relationships, it may be our neighborhood, or it may be the entire culture shaped by the media, music, and entertainment that we expose ourselves to.

As adults, we have lots of control over what we put in our minds. We have dozens of TV channels, millions of songs on iTunes, thousands of books, and hundreds of magazine and newspaper titles to choose from. If we choose to degrade our lives and conform to the lowest common denominator of the culture we certainly have that option.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good and perfect will.”

Kansas City Star Opinion Page

2007-03-02T11:02:00.000-06:00

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see an essay I wrote on the Opinion page of the Kansas City Star. It is pretty much taken from this page a few months ago, so it may sound familiar to my regular readers.

In case you missed it, here is the link:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/opinion/16813778.htm

Fishers of Men

2007-02-20T11:14:00.000-06:00

Luke 5 tells the story of Jesus calling some of his disciples from a group of fisherman. He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Like many people, my image was one of an angler standing beside a trout stream or a lake, slowing casting a line. Down the shore was another fisherman doing the same thing. Occasionally they would exchange pleasantries –“Catching anything?” “No, you?”

But that is not the context here. Jesus is talking to a fishing crew who had just pulled in boatload of fish. When Jesus implied that His followers would be “Fishers of Men,” he was obviously thinking about a crew working together, repairing nets, driving the boat, hauling in the nets, and sorting fish. That is a much different picture than the loan fisherman casting a line with a rod and reel. Unlike a stringer of bass, a boatload of fish is not particularly pretty. There are all sorts of things in the net. A Biblically functioning church will have all sorts of people. Drug addicts, alcoholics, and ex-cons will be sitting next to doctors, lawyers, and teachers.

Not surprisingly, that happens everyday at coffeehouses such as Homer’s, sporting events, and often, the workplace - less often in church and Sunday School.

If we are on a fishing-boat crew, no one person can point to a fish and say that one’s mine. We are all in it together. We’re working together to build one another up, building a better community, and growing “The Kingdom of God.”

Ski Time

2007-02-02T10:59:00.000-06:00

Well, it looks like I am not going to make it skiing this year. This is one of the few years out of the past 25 when we have not gone on a ski trip. It is not that I am such a great skier or that I even love it that much. After all, a person isn’t going to get very good at anything doing it just 2 or 3 days a year. I just love everything about skiing.

I love riding in the car across Kansas with my wife. I love the first sighting of the mountains. I love riding the lifts and having lunch on the patio of the Summit House in 20 degree weather. Then later, walking down Main Street in Breckenridge and having dinner at the Whales Tail. Oh sure, the skiing is fun too.

But the overall affect of winter sports, whether it is skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, or snowmobiling, is that it completely changes one’s attitude about winter. When I am loading the car in the parking lot at Sam’s in single-digit weather, it reminds me of unloading boots and skis in the parking lot at Copper Mountain. Walking across the yard in knee-deep snow reminds me of cross-country skiing in Yellowstone. Driving on snow-packed roads is part of the experience, and when this too is associated with something fun, it makes the whole thing more bearable.

Knowing that we have skied all morning in sub-zero weather at Jackson Hole makes going to work at plus-six no big deal. I know for a fact that my car will start at minus thirty five, so I don’t worry about it at zero. I think this is the concept that James was talking about in James 1 when he said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He goes on to say that the trials make us mature and lead to wisdom. That is how we get stronger.

Now if I can just think of something to like about the heat this summer.

Looking out for others

2007-01-29T13:11:00.000-06:00

One of my ongoing pursuits is trying to figure out why some people are successful at whatever they want to accomplish while others are always floundering.

One clue is found in the Bible in Philippians chapter 2, verse 4. Paul say’s “Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others.” The Message paraphrases it this way, “Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”

This is not only scripture, but the best business advice I can think of. Zig Ziglar say’s, “You can get everything in life that you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

We have had a few issues lately with people either leaving early or arriving late to work. We try to accommodate people’s needs, but the real problem is that if one person has to leave early, arrive late, or call in sick, somebody else’s plans are changed. One person being late for work means somebody else has to work later than they had planned. One person’s desire to put their own plans ahead of their work commitment means somebody else has to cancel a date, change dinner plans, or miss an important meeting.

The ability to put other’s interest ahead of your own, in the long haul, translates to one thing – winners and losers. Selfishness always looses. Looking out for others always wins.

We are very fortunate in our business at Homer’s Coffee House to be able to help young people learn these principles early. It is a joy to be able to help shape the work habits of young people, greatly increasing the chances that they will be labeled with the winners, because they have learned the importance of service, hard work, and looking out for the interest of others.

The Culture of Sameness

2007-01-16T11:38:00.000-06:00

On a recent trip to Europe, the first thing we noticed, in big cities and small towns, was that 95% of retail businesses and restaurants were single location, usually with the proprietor behind the counter. There are very few chains, big box stores, or franchises. This is in a remarkable contrast to the US where small owner-operated shops or cafés have all but disappeared. As a result we have less choice, lower quality, and certainly no personal service.

I have been trying to figure this out for several months and the conversations I have had with other small business owners are alarming. Contrary to popular belief, most can compete with the “big guys” on a level playing field quite nicely, thank you. The problem is that the field is not as level as you might expect.

Developers and landlords seem to be increasingly unwilling to rent to anyone but national accounts, (click here) to the point of canceling leases for owner-operators and seeking to fill the space with national chains. There is a growing culture that thinks that small is bad, familiarity is good, and that unique is undesirable. That is why a drive down Dodge in Omaha, or Metcalf in Overland Park or any other shopping street in any American city looks exactly the same.

A while back we were visiting relatives in a city 2,000 miles away. When the subject of lunch came up, they suggested Red Lobster, Olive Garden, or Applebee’s, the same restaurants that are within six blocks of our home. These places are all OK, but they could be anywhere. Signs of local flavor are quickly disappearing.

I don’t have a solution. I have only begun to identify the problem. I have seen window decals in Chicago saying, “Support your Local Merchants,” encouraging neighbors to support their neighbors. This might be a start, but local merchants don’t need benevolence, they just need to be able to rent prime space at market rates, have access to goods at fair prices, and be treated the same as other businesses when it comes to taxes and regulations.

It is hard to compete when the big chain down the street is getting tax breaks, strong arms the supplies to get rock bottom prices, and intentionally drives out competition. But owner-operators have the advantage of knowing the customers, knowing the community, not having to rely on reports to know how business is doing, and having consistent management.

I would like your ideas about this situation. Click on the “comments” link below.

Meeting people's needs

2007-01-10T11:20:00.001-06:00

Churches and ministry organizations are often accused of being out of touch with the needs of the culture, and rightly so. We can go along for years being totally ineffective and be content in our own little world. But big commercial organizations can make huge mistakes as well.

Take cell phones as an example. Motorola demonstrated a handheld portable cell telephone in 1973. The press made a big deal out of it stating that the completely portable wireless telephone would change the way people lived and that the world would never be the same.

Unfortunately nobody at Motorola, AT&T, or the FCC believed it. Little effort was put into developing it and little bandwidth was assigned. AT&T was so convinced that there was no commercial potential that it gave away the technology it had developed. This was in spite of the fact that pop culture had forecast, and the public longed, for such a device for years. Dick Tracy had his wrist two-way radio in the 30’s and Adam Smart had a telephone in his shoe in a 1960’s TV show. If there was ever a demand for a new technology, this was it.

A consultant for AT&T predicted that the world-wide market for cell phones would be about 900,000. They missed it by a factor of 1,000s. There are now billions of cell phones in use. For that reason we now suffer from overcrowded frequencies due to not enough bandwidth, highly compressed signals, and a confusion of standards, resulting in poor sound, weak signals, and dropped calls. All because demand is far greater than the major players ever expected.

Even a casual observer of culture can see that there is little need for wired telephones or broadcast television, yet billions of dollars have been wasted on these technologies. People stay home to watch TV, but they need a telephone wherever they are, not the other way around. Looking at a picture of the radio spectrum it is easy to see that huge chunks are given to broadcast television while only a few slivers are designated for personal communication.

I am sure there was a reason for this at the time. Television just followed the model of radio even though radio is a portable device and portable TVs have never caught on. Who knows why portable phones were so long in coming? I tried to get a car phone in the 1960’s only to find that there was a long waiting list due to the fact that there were only a few frequencies available. Doctors and emergency personnel were given priority, so the chances of a photographer getting one were slim.

The point of all this is this: we need to be aware of people’s needs and wants and work to supply those needs. Just providing what we want to provide or what is easy is not the model demonstrated by Jesus. He met people’s needs whatever they were.

Stuff, stuff, stuff

2007-01-02T16:53:00.000-06:00

Four year’s ago, Louise and I sold or gave away two-thirds of our possessions and moved from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment. It was not at all an easy thing to do. In fact it was one of the hardest things we have ever done. But in retrospect, it was well worth the trouble. We had no idea how weighed down we had become with extra stuff in our life. Since then we have kind of become the “go to” people for those wishing to down size and simplify their lives.

The first thing I tell people is to figure out who you are and get rid of everything that isn’t you. For example, I now describe myself as a musician, photographer, and writer. That means that I am not a woodworker, a mechanic, or gardener. Therefore I do not need woodworking equipment, mechanics tools, or gardening tools. By my own definition of who I am, I only need musical instruments I can play, a camera that works, and a computer to write on. Everything else is superfluous and could be discarded.

Of course it isn’t that simply, but you get the idea and that is a good start. Eliminating equipment for hobbies I no longer pursued helped clean out my basement. It also helped in reducing the size of my library.

In the kitchen we had our good dishes and our everyday dishes, our good silver and our everyday stuff. The simple decision that we were good enough for the “good stuff” all the time allowed us to get rid of all the everyday day stuff and use the best stuff everyday. Our lifestyle went up and the clutter went down.

In my case at least, the accumulation of stuff was caused by the pursuit of different interests over time. I restored an old car and ended up with mechanics tools and car parts. Since I don’t even work on my own car anymore, I don’t either. Multiply that principle by twenty and you get the idea.

Clarity of purpose and a clear understanding of who we are and what we want to do will go a long way in simplifying our lives. Staying focused on our calling and sharpening our passions will help eliminate the junk in the basement and garage.

God created us with a purpose. Satan’s plan is to keep us distracted with stuff to the point that we never get around to completing God's purpose.

Finishing Strong

2006-12-29T12:01:00.000-06:00

As we wrap up another year, it is a good time to think about starting and ending strong. In the performing arts, whether it is drama or music, the opening and closing are most important. The first line of a play or the first stanza of a concert sets the tone for the whole show. Then the very last line or ending of the last song stays with the audience and determines to a large degree their overall feeling about the performance.

In our band rehearsals, we spend a good amount of time on the intros and endings. How do we start the song and how do we end it? We want to end a song (and the show) clean and strong.

This is a good metaphor for life. The first few years of life are extremely important and will serve to set the tone for the rest of our life. But the ending is also important. A surprising number of people do not end well. This week James Brown died. Brown’s importance to popular music cannot be overstated. His titles, “The Godfather of Soul” and “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” were well earned. I saw James Brown back in 1967 and his performance set new standards as to what was possible on stage. He influenced generations of musicians both black and white. But even a short biography of him must mention his felony convictions and other bouts with the law, mainly in the latter part of his life. James Brown was not a hood who made good, he was a person who grew up in church, became a super-star, and went bad.

He is not the only one. George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, the one man that did more to bring photography to everybody than anybody, died at his own hand. A surprising number of successful business people die bitter. Finishing strong is certainly not automatic and, in fact, requires quite a bit of conscience effort and planning.

It is complicated by the fact that life gets harder at a time when we think it should be getting easier. That makes us angry. We can either give up and become bitter, striking out at anyone who will listen, or we can decide to stay in the game. Play the game until the last out is made or play the song until the last chord is struck. It really is our choice.

God's love at Christmas

2006-12-19T20:50:00.000-06:00

Christmas time is my favorite time of year. Sure I get tired of the commercialism, but love is always just below the surface. People are hurrying around trying to get last minute shopping done, but many if not most, still take time to think about others.

One my wife and my Christmas traditions is to go out to eat at a nice restaurant, just the two of us. We usually do this a few days before Christmas. Since Christmas is usually spent with families, we want a special time for the two of us. We have done this every year for the past 35 years.

As is often the case, this year we went to the Plaza. The Country Club Plaza is our favorite part of Kansas City and our home for a few years until last year. We decided to go to Houston’s for ribs. It seems odd that the best ribs in a barbeque town are not even at a barbeque restaurant, but Houston’s are the best.

As we finished up our dinner, the waitress said, “Oh, by the way, your ticket has been taken care of, you don’t owe anything.” It seems an anonymous person had already paid for our meal. What a joy and blessing to know that someone was willing to share love in such an unselfish way.

Even during a time in my life when resources were much more plentiful than they are now, I never did that.

We have many opportunities to share the love of God with others. Paying somebody else’s ticket at a restaurant is one; but lending a hand to person in need, or an ear to someone who just needs to talk, also shows Gods love.

But why wait until Christmas, I want to show love to those around me every day of the year.

It's Almost Christmas!

2006-12-11T10:47:00.000-06:00

I was at a pancake house in Chicago last week when I overheard the guy next to me complaining about Christmas. He said it was just an old pagan holiday and had nothing to do with Jesus and he wanted no part of it. After I listened to him rant for a few minutes I decided to join the conversation. (One should always listen for a few minutes before joining a conversation already in progress.)

I agreed that December 25 was originally the day that the Romans celebrated the birth of the sun. But when Constantine became a Christian in the fourth century, he changed it to the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus – the son. Constantine wanted to honor Jesus’ birth and also give credibility to Christians by giving them a holiday. Since the actual date of Jesus’ birth was unknown, he took an existing holiday, by then associated with a pagan custom, and converted it to Christmas. You can do that sort of thing when you are the Emperor. We have been celebrating December 25, Christmas, as the birth of Jesus for nearly 1,700 years.

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays because it reminds me of Jesus’ humanity. Even though He was God, He chose to be born as a baby, raised in a working class family, and preach love, forgiveness, and a simply lifestyle. Like the man in Chicago, I too am a little put off by people spending huge amounts of money to celebrate the birth of a man that they don’t know or hardly care about.

In modern day America where a person’s value is determined by how much “stuff” he has, it is only reasonable that we would honor our friends and relatives by giving them more “stuff.” In Luke 12:15 Jesus said, “A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” This is a hard fact to get into our heads in a culture where the opposite seems to be the conventional wisdom.

Remember that Jesus Christ is Lord on this special day when we celebrate His birth.

Voice Lesson Day

2006-11-27T17:23:00.000-06:00

Mondays are special days because that is the day I have my voice lesson. You see, since I was a very small child, I always wanted to sing. Because I wasn’t very good, I was discouraged from singing by my teachers, parents, relatives…well, I guess about anybody who heard me sing.

After I became a Christian and the subject of spiritual gifts came up, I always wished that I had been gifted as a singer. I even silently prayed that God would give me my desire to be able to sing.

Finally, after fifty years of quietly wishing I had the ability to sing, I decided to start singing. I am not sure why I started, other than just fifty years of desire finally broke through.

At first, I was pretty tentative, but eventually I gained confidence. My wife suggested that I take singing lessons. I decided to take that as encouragement rather than discouragement. This summer I began taking voice lessons from Ronni Ward. I now singing regularly with my band and at church.

I have been getting a lot of compliments, most of which start with the phrase, “I didn’t know you could sing.”

Here are the questions: Did God answer my prayer and suddenly give me a singing voice? Did I always have the ability and just needed to develop it? Or is singing a learned skill that just about anybody can learn with enough desire and a good teacher?

The fact that music is never mentioned in the Bible in the context of giftedness, leads me to believe that singing or playing an instrument, are skills, a craft if you will, that just about anybody can learn, given enough time, motivation, and teaching. If there is giftedness involved, the gift is the desire to spend the time and energy required to develop the skill.

Let me know what you think.

Ronni Ward's response...

Thank you Jim. I think your'e onto something there about developing and learning. I would have to disagree about giftedness. There are some people who have a certain amount of ability and can work at it and increase their skill. These people may not be especially "gifted" in that particular area; whatever it may be, but there is value and purpose in it. For instance, take my guitar playing ability. I have to work extremely hard just to accompany myself to an acceptable level. Then there are guitarists like David George, Brian Ruskin, David Smart or Bonnie Raitte (not your cat). While it's true that becoming that good is a lot of disipline and hard work, I would say they are "gifted" in that area. Bob Dylan is known more for his songs than for his voice. His voice is important, but his songwriting is his gifting and he will never be what Elvis or Reba are (or were) to the world... vocally speaking. Musical giftings are never more important than the gift of being an encourager or a leader or a manager etc., only more coveted and perhaps more noticed.

I just wanted to get in my two cents. I would have responded with a blog message if I knew how to set up an account. I guess blogging's not my "gifting" I may have to work at it.
Feel free to share this with whomever you wish.

Ronni

Changing Times

2006-11-23T21:36:00.000-06:00

I was just watching John Fogerty performing during the half time of the Chiefs/Broncos game. A few minutes in a stadium hardly gives a hint of this man’s talents, but it was fun to be reminded of the great Creedence Clearwater Revival music.

While watching Fogerty, I was also looking through some old photo magazines. Reading reviews of products that have long since come and gone, I couldn’t help but think about change. Only ten years ago, I was considered a master at a craft that is now obsolete. For over twenty years, I was as good as anybody in the world at making black and white photographs. Film, chemicals, and photographic paper were my livelihood and life. It has now been years since I was in a darkroom, and I am not sure why anybody would want to be. Digital cameras, computers, and ink jet printers can easily surpass film in quality.

The world has changed. Creedence Clearwater Revival is history and Tri-X, Plus-X and D-76 are heading for museums. Resisting change is not only futile but dangerous. John Fogerty does some nostalgic shows, but he is also doing new music, always looking ahead. Somebody has wisely said that those who resist change will inevitable be affected negatively by that resistance.

In business, we risk being left behind. In college economics we talked about buggy whip manufactures. Today we could be talking about film processors, video tape editors, carburetor mechanics, or mainframe computer programmers. Businesses have to constantly be looking down the road to stay ahead of fast moving technologies.

In ministry, it is not so obvious. Because the bottom line is not easily measured, we can be years behind without even knowing it. Peter Drucker said that if you are doing anything the same way you did it 5 years, it is probably wrong. I know of many ministries, churches, and other not-for-profits that are still following the same model set up by the founders in the 1930’s, 40’s, or 50’s.

As Christians, we cannot afford to ignore the changing cultures. We must be relevant, flexible, and proactive if we want to bring Christ’s message of love and reconciliation to a hurting world.

Squandering Resources

2006-11-15T12:19:00.000-06:00

It seems that those of us who consider ourselves evangelical Christians have come to the environmental debate a little late. In the book of Genesis we are a given the task of managing the resources of the planet. It is probably because we don’t want to be associated with those who would worship the creation and ignore the creator, but that is not a very good excuse. In many areas we have squandered resources and largely made a mess of things. Jesus was particularly critical of those people who wasted resources and opportunities.

I don’t believe that we can be better stewards by just trying harder and recycling newspapers and aluminum cans. There is a need for total culture change. A recently heard about a couple who built what may be the “greenest” house in the nation. It uses all sorts of technical gee-whiz such as active solar and ground affects. It was not mentioned that the house is 30 miles out in the country and that they work downtown. Between the two of them they likely commute 100 miles a day or more. Clearly, this was an academic exercise with no intention of saving fossil fuel.

In the past twenty years the average new home has more than doubled in size. The average fuel economy of all the cars on the road has not changed, in spite of the fact that there has been much technical advancement. Obviously gasoline prices, natural gas, or electric prices have not had an effect on our lifestyles or how we choose to spend our money.

A large coffeehouse chain makes a big deal out of their recycling efforts but offers only single-use cups and utensils. Using glass cups and stainless steel utensils would save millions of tons of paper and disposable plastic and reduce waste dramatically. Most goods we buy are over-packaged, wasting much paper and plastic and filling our land-fills.

Our culture tells us that it is good to build a “McMansion” in the suburbs and commute 30 miles in a large vehicle that barely makes twenty-miles to the gallon. At the same time, those who share a few walls with their neighbors, reducing utilities cost by 80 – 90 %, and walk or bicycle to work, are considered weird or somehow under-privileged.

In a free society, most choices come down to economics. As long as we have relatively cheap fuel, people will continue to buy huge houses and drive inefficient vehicles too far to work.

In countries with no domestic petroleum resources, where gasoline regularly runs $5.00 per gallon or more, most people walk, or ride bicycles or scooters to work; apartments or townhouses clustered together to save energy and build community are the norm; and automobiles get 40-50 miles per gallon.

I believe that we will make great strides in improving the environment and saving resources, not from complicated technologies like hybrid cars, but from simply deciding that spending an hour a day in the car driving to our 5,000 square foot house is not the way we want to spend our time and money.

Bonnie & Me

2006-11-09T10:05:00.000-06:00

My cat and I adore each other. I carry her around on my shoulder. She has me all figured out. She knows if she scratches her post she gets a treat. If she rolls over on her back, I rub her tummy. But she has no idea what I am writing about. She certainly doesn’t know what I do all day. Even though she tries, her singing and playing guitar leave a lot to be desired. My relationship with God is a lot like that. His realty is so much beyond mine that I can only understand a small amount and attempt to show my affection for Him through worship and obedience.

When I was about 10 years old, a Sunday School teacher sat me down and went through God’s “Plan of Salvation.” I don’t remember the exact details, but it was something like: 1. God has a plan for my life; 2. All have sinned; 3. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life; 4. If you believe in your heart and confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.

This seemed pretty straight-forward and I had no trouble understanding that all had sinned. The problem was that if it was that clear, why wasn’t this in the first four verses of Genesis, or the last four verses of Revelations. Why didn’t Jesus spell this out in the Sermon and the Mount, or at least, Luke should have highlighted it with bullet points. Why do we have to look through pages of scripture and pull out selected verses to find truths that should be so clear. Furthermore, a person could say just about anything using this technique.

Fifty years later, I am very familiar with tracts such as “The Four Spiritual Laws” and “Steps to Peace With God.” These booklets easily explain eternal truths in 10 pages including illustrations, but they open up tons of questions. Questions like, how about the person who has never heard about Jesus? Or what about all the wonderful people in churches who suffer from nothing worse than bad theology?

The problem is that this simplification is like saying that a sandwich is a piece of dead animal between two slices of bread. It is true, but there is more to know. Anyone who has ever talked to a baker about bread or a barbeque expert about sauces and meats knows that a sandwich is never just a sandwich. As I enjoy my PB&J or a veggie-burger, I realize that even my definition of a sandwich is not exactly right.

It is tempting to put God in a box and say we have Him figured out. But God is much bigger than we think or can know. His ways are beyond our widest understanding. Fortunately, we don’t have to understand God’s whole plan. It is not our place to judge or condemn others, but God’s. Our job is to respond to what we DO know - live our lives in such a way that we bring glory to Him.