#6 Lessons Baby Boomers Learned from

[clutch-wept]

Ultimate Ship Meme

Ana Maria Ramos ღ John Seed

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Tagging: @baeogorath @oldserah​ @gamer-purgatory​ @gracethornwood​ @dep-yo-tee​ @deputy-janai​ @bleudragonfire​ @hoesephseed​ @twirlingsmoke and YOU!

General

Rate the Ship: Awful | Ew | No pics pls | I’m not comfortable | Alright | I like it! | Got Pics? | Let’s do it! | Why is this not getting more attention?! | The OTP to rule all other OTPs

How long will they last? ○  Until Ana drops dead and John follows suit from heartbreak.

How quickly did/will they fall in love? ○  It was a... process.

How was their first kiss? ○  Slow, hesitant, hopeful.

Wedding

Note: Their canon timeline wouldn’t allow them to have a proper wedding so this is hypothetical.

Who proposed? ○  John beat Ana to the punch. She was still working up the nerve to do it herself.

Who is the best man/men? ○  Joseph would be John’s best man.

Who is the bride’s maid(s)? ○  Sharky and Hurk Jr would be Ana’s bros of honor.

Who did the most planning? ○  Ana would try to plan it as to avoid putting any more work on John’s shoulders. John and Ana’s mother end up taking over anyways.

Who stressed the most? ○  Ana. John’s in his element when it comes to event planning, Ana not so much.

How fancy was the ceremony? Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big. [ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʙɪɢɢᴇꜱᴛ ᴍᴇxɪᴄᴀɴ ʙᴏᴅᴀ ᴛʜɪꜱ ꜱɪᴅᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴍᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴀ ɪꜰ ᴀɴᴀ'ꜱ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʜᴀᴅ ɢᴏᴛᴛᴇɴ ʜᴇʀ ᴡᴀʏ]

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? ○  Nick nearly got himself uninvited but after a heated argument and a promise of several kegs of his favorite beer at the reception things were smoothed out.

Sex

Who is on top? ○  John for the most part.

Who is the one to instigate things? ○  They both good at initiating.

How healthy is their sex life? Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? ○  Varies.

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? ○  They try to keep it balanced but don’t worry themselves too much about it.

How rough are they in bed? Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it. [ᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ɪᴛ'ꜱ ᴀɴ ɪɴᴛɪᴍᴀᴛᴇ, ʀᴇʟᴀxᴇᴅ ᴅᴀʟʟɪᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴏʀ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ'ꜱ ʙᴏᴜᴛᴛᴀ ɢᴇᴛ ᴄʜᴏᴋᴇᴅ]

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children

How many children will they have naturally? ○  1, possibly 2

How many children will they adopt? ○  n/a

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? ○  Ana since she breastfeeds, so she’s by the baby more often by default. John’s pretty good about helping out though.

Who is the stricter parent? ○  Ana.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? ○  Ana’s had to do a running dive, or several, to catch the kiddo(s).

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? ○  John.

Who is the more loved parent? ○  John since he’s the good cop to Ana’s bad cop.

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? ○  John, as he’s the more diplomatic of the two.

Who cried the most at graduation? ○  The grandparents.

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? ○  John. Ana’s more likely to let em sit in a cell for a few days if she thinks it’ll teach em a lesson.

Cooking

Who does the most cooking? ○  Ana.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? ○  John has a few foods he absolutely abhors due to being forced to eat them as a child.

Who does the grocery shopping? ○  John has his followers

How often do they bake desserts? ○  Ana likes to put older fruits she hasn’t gotten around to eating in bread. She’ll sometimes make cookies too.

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? ○  Ana is partial to meat but they’re both okay with either.

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? ○  John likes to go all out with an extravagantly cooked dinner and pretty gifts. Ana is more likely to make a home-made meal while planning to do a cute activity together.

Who is more likely to suggest going out? ○  John, though the selection of restaurants is pretty limited in Hope County...

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidentally while cooking? ○  Ana after a dozen beers as she tries to demonstrate a hibachi routine an Army cook once showed her.

Chores

Who cleans the room? ○  Ana will clean her room and other living areas. John can clean but usually has the help do it.

Who is really against chores? ○  Ana takes her time starting chores but does a good job finishing them.

Who cleans up after the pets? ○  Ana cleans up after all her Fangs for Hire. John will help sometimes with Boomer but leaves Peaches’ and Cheeseburger’s messes to his followers.

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? ○  Neither

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? ○  Ana channeling her mother: “There can not be any sign of LIVING in this house!” [ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛɪᴍᴇꜱ ᴊᴏʜɴ ʜᴀꜱ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ʜᴇʟᴘ ʜᴇʀ ᴏᴜᴛ ꜱᴏ ꜱʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴇꜱɴ'ᴛ ɢᴏ ᴀᴘᴇꜱʜɪᴛ]

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? ○  Ana gets really excited when she manages to find any spare change and keeps what she finds in a former mayonnaise jar.

Misc.

Who takes the longer showers/baths? ○  Ana stays in until the water turns cold when she wants some daydreaming time.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? ○  Ana will take Boomer out but John occasionally joins her.

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? ○  Ana likes to decorate for the 4th of July, the start of fall, Halloween, and Christmas.

What are their goals for the relationship? ○  John wants to let go of some of his deep-seated resentments and learn healthier coping mechanisms. He doesn’t want to keep hurting or disappointing those closest to him. Ana wants to do away with her hero complex which has caused her to inadvertently hurt as many people as she’s saved.

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? ○  Ana, if she’s particularly exhausted after a excursion.

Who plays the most pranks? ○  A N A

[plantaardigegezichtsverzor-blog1]

How to grow a Home Health Care Nurse

Plantaardige gezichtsverzorging

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How to grow a Home Health Care Nurse

House Health Care Nursing Information in addition to Overview

Home health care will be allowing the patient and their loved ones to maintain dignity and freedom. According to the National Association intended for Home Care, there are more as compared to 7 million individuals in the us in need of home health care midwife services because of acute health issues, long term health problems, permanent handicap or terminal illness.

Residence Health Care Basics

Nurses training in a number of venues: Hospital options, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health care. Property health care nursing is a increasing phenomenon as more people and their families desire to obtain care in their homes. The of home health care is a result of Public Health Nursing where public welfare nurses made home trips to promote health education and offer treatment as part of community outreach programs. Today academic courses train nurses in household care and agencies spot home health care nurses together with ailing individuals and their family members depending on the nurse's experience as well as qualifications. In many cases there is a distributed relationship between the agency plus the academic institution.

Many adjustments have taken place in the area associated with home health care. These include Medicare health insurance and Medicaid, and Longer term care insurance reimbursement and documents. It is important for the nurse and also nursing agency to be aware of the countless factors involved for these foibles resulting from these organizations. Human population and demographic changes take place as well. Baby boomers getting close to retirement and will present brand-new challenges for the home health-related industry. Technology and amounts in hospitals has cause shorter inpatient stay plus more at-home rehabilitation. Increases with medical outpatient procedures may also be taking place with follow-up house care. This has resulted in typically the decrease of mortality rate coming from these technologies and chunks of money has lead to increases within morbidity and chronic condition that makes the need for home medical care nursing a greater priority.

Household Health Care Nurse Job Information

Through an array of skills along with experience, home health care nursing staff specialize in a wide range of treatments; mental support, education of affected individuals who are recovering from illnesses in addition to injury for young children as well as adults, to women who have seen recent childbirth, to the older who need palliative care for long-term illness.

A practicing health care worker must have the skills to provide treatment in a unique setting like someone's home. The health professional is working with the patient along with the family and must understand the connection skills for such design. Rapport is evident in every nursing positions, but employed in a patient's own liveable space needs a different level of talent and understanding. There is independent decision making as the nurse is not really working as a team with other rns in a structured environment, yet is now as a member of often the "family" team. The web host family has cultural ideals that are important and are distinct for every patient and please note00 with extreme sensitivity. Additional skills include critical pondering, coordination, assessment, communication, and also documentation.

Home health care nurse practitioners also specialize in the proper care of children with disabilities that will require additional skills such as endurance and understanding of the needs on the family. Children are living with ailments today that would have triggered mortality just twenty years before. Genetic disorders, congenital bodily impairments, and injury are only a few. Many families understand managing the needs of the baby, but still need expert attention that only a home health care registered nurse can provide. It is important that a residence health care nurse is aware of the assistance of the family about the child's situation for proper care of the little one. There are many complexities involved, most important, a positive attitude along with positive reinforcement is most important for the development of the child.

Treatment coordination between the home healthcare nurse, doctor, and pharmacologist, ensures proper management with the exact science behind offering the patient the correct dose, moment of administration, and combos. Home health care nurses must be familiar with pharmacology and coached in training about several medications used by patients inside the clinical setting.

Many innovative practicing nurses are familiar with treatment regiments. They have completed masteral level programs. Home medical agencies believe that a midwife should have at least one year regarding clinical experience before going into home health care. Advanced training nurses can expedite that will training by helping completely new nurses understand the home health-related market and teaching.

Career and Salary

According to the Usa Department of Labor, there was 2 . 4 million healthcare professionals in America, the largest healthcare job, yet many academic in addition to hospital organizations believe we have a gross shortage in breastfeeding staff. The shortage of nursing staff was 6% in 2050 and is expected to be 10% in 2010. The average salary to get hospital nursing is $53, 450 with 3 away from 5 nursing jobs are located in the hospital. For home medical care, the salary is $49, 000. For nursing health care facilities, they were the lowest from $48, 200.

Training as well as continuing education

Most home healthcare nurses gain their education and learning through accredited nursing educational institutions throughout the country with an connect degree in nursing (ADN), a Bachelor's of Science degree in nursing (BSN), or a master's degree in nursing (MSN). According to the United States Department involving Labor, in 2004 there were 674 BSN nursing programs, 846 ADN programs. Also, in year 2004, there were 417 master's qualification programs, 93 doctoral packages, and 46 joint BSN-doctoral programs. The associate level program takes 2 to 3 yrs to complete, while bachelors diplomas take 4 years to finish. Nurses can also earn customized professional certificates online inside Geriatric Care or Existence Care Planning.

In addition , for anyone nurses who choose to follow advancement into administrative postures or research, consulting, and also teaching, a bachelor's education is often essential. A bachelors degree is also important for transforming into a clinical nurse specialist, health care worker anesthetists, nurse midwives, along with nurse practitioners (U. S i9000. Department of Labor, 2004).

All home health care rns have supervised clinical knowledge during their training, but as mentioned previously advanced practicing nurses maintain master's degrees and as opposed to bachelor and associate qualifications, they have a minimum of two years connected with post clinical experience. Classes includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and biology, microbiology, nutrition, psychology, in addition to behavioral sciences and open-handed arts. Many of these programs have got training in nursing homes, public health division, home health agencies, as well as ambulatory clinics. (U. Nasiums. Dep. of Labor, 2004).

Whether a nurse is lessons in a hospital, nursing center, or home care, training is necessary. Health care is transforming rapidly and staying abreast with all the latest developments enhances affected person care and health treatments. Universities, continuing education programs, and also internet sites, all offer training. One such organization that provides training is the American Nurses Relationship (ANA) or through the Us Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

References Health care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care

[agespecific]

Were you a reader as a child? Did you snuggle up in a chair or under the covers at bedtime while an adult read to you? If so, chances are you were impacted by the wisdom found in children’s books.

Reading helps us to understand ourselves, the world around us and other people. Reading also allows us to experience things we could not experience personally.

Some children’s books, especially those written in the 18th and 19th centuries were thinly veiled attempts at imparting morals and manners to children.

Later books were more focused on entertaining children, though lessons seeped through like water in a sieve, impacting us – even if we were not consciously aware of what we were learning.

I still remember my mother reading aloud the novel Heidi, one chapter at a time. My sister and I anxiously perched on the bed, waiting to hear about Heidi, Peter, Grandfather and the goats.

We imagined the far away setting in the Alps, almost breathing in the fresh air as Heidi did. From Heidi, I learned compassion, feeling homesick along with the little orphan girl and her wheelchair bound friend Clara.

Compassion is just one of the many lessons I learned while reading classic children’s novels. Here are six other lessons we may have unconsciously learned as we read and reread the beloved stories of our youth.

We Can Be Independent

Part of the work of childhood is gradually growing into people who are independent from our parents and caregivers. Children’s books are full of stories of children who take the reins and control their own destiny.

Remember Nancy Drew? She was very independent, driving around in her blue roadster with only the slightest supervision from her father. The Boxcar Children successfully lived alone in an abandoned box car, working to get money for food and taking care of each other.

The children of Narnia managed quite well in their adopted fantasy land, conquering foes with little adult help. Pippi Longstocking lived in Villa Villakkulla with nary an adult in sight.

Children’s stories helped us to imagine living independently without actually leaving the safety of our homes. We could escape our everyday lives and live in a tree like Sam, the young boy in My Side of the Mountain, who runs away, adopts a falcon and survives on his own in the Catskill mountains.

These characters and others like them taught us that with resourcefulness and hard work we can take care of ourselves.

Pluck and Grit Will Take You Far

Remember Laura Ingalls Wilder? The child of the Little House on the Prairie series was known for her spirit. Other young pioneers such as tomboy Caddie Woodlawn, Jody in The Yearling, and Travis of Old Yeller were also courageous and not afraid to act.

Creating a home in a new and untamed land is one recipe for developing kids with pluck and grit, but clearly not the only one.

Young Ramona in the Beverly Cleary books is gutsy, audacious and bold. Velvet, of National Velvet, is strong-willed and determined.

Homer Price manages to foil bank robbers and control a situation with a donut machine gone berserk. These are characters who persevere and tenaciously deal with life’s challenges.

Many of us also devoured biographies. The Childhood of Famous Americans series, little blue and orange books, were wildly popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

The books, which were later deemed to be more fictional than reality, focused on the lives of courageous children who grew up to be heroes. These and other biographies inspired us to do worthy things.

Be Open to Adventure

Children’s stories are full of characters who have adventures. What would The Adventures of Tom Sawyer have been like if Tom, Huck and Becky had stayed home and played board games all day?

Think of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and the Tollivers solving mysteries. Young Jim Hawkins has his map of Treasure Island and goes out to sea. The children of the Melendy family have a new adventure every Saturday.

Travel appeared in children’s books before it became mainstream for many people. Donna Parker goes to Hollywood, making us long for the world of glamour and movie stars.

Nancy Drew travels to France, Nairobi and Austria. The Bobbsey Twins visited Plymouth Rock and Colonial Williamsburg, imparting history lessons along the way.

Children in books also traveled across time and place. Tolly in the Greene Knowe series meets children from the past. Charlotte in Charlotte Sometimes travels via magical bed to an English boarding school in 1918. In children’s books, time travel – with all of its adventurous possibilities – is an option.

You Need Friends

We all need a sidekick or two. Friends help us out of sticky situations and encourage us to be our best. They provide laughter and help us to find insight just when we need it.

Charlotte had Wilbur. Betsy had Tacy. Nancy Drew had Bess and George. Donna Parker had Ricky West, and Trixie Beldon had Honey Wheeler. The two sets of Bobbsey twins had each other.

Anne of Green Gables had her bosom buddy, Diana. Like Anne, many of us had or longed for a friend who was our steadfast companion and kindred spirit. If we lacked such a friend in our lives, characters from the novels we read often became our friends.

It’s Fun to Stretch Your Imagination

The fun and fantasy of children’s books enriched us by stretching our imaginations. We love to suspend willing disbelief in order to accept the magical.

Remember Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle? She was a little old lady whose husband was a pirate. She lived in an upside-down house and imparted ‘cures’ to children who misbehaved. What fun it was to imagine playing in an upside-down house or digging up treasure in the back yard.

Fantasy could take us on adventures. We could step through a wardrobe in England and walk into Narnia, where we could meet witches and battle evil. We traveled to Oz with Dorothy and had fun believing that lands like Oz, with all of its magical creatures, exist.

Mythology and folklore also gave us fantastic tales. We imagined what it would be like to be a giant like Paul Bunyan and have a big blue ox for a pet. We could also have dragons for pets or ride one conquering the air. We soured across the skies and into the oceans with Greek gods and goddesses.

Some fantasies were closer to home. The adventures of a lowly house painter, Mr. Popper and his twelve penguins, kept us laughing. We imagined what fun it would be to have such amazing creatures in our own homes.

Believing in the impossible opened us up to creativity, which feeds our souls and helps us to solve problems.

Kindness Matters

Children’s books often bring out the simple theme that kindness matters. In the beginning of Charlotte’s Web, Fern saves a runt pig, Wilbur, from her father’s ax. Saving Wilbur’s life allows friendship in the barnyard to blossom.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, we learn the hard way from the story of Wanda, a young girl who is ridiculed for wearing the same dress every day.

When she proclaims that she has a hundred dresses, the other girls laugh. Her bullies eventually learn the truth, too late for Wanda but in time to teach them – and us – a lesson about kindness.

In children’s books we also learn to love and care for animals. Books such as Bambi, Lassie and the horse stories of Marguerite Henry gave us insight into the lives of animals. Many children experienced the love of animals they met through books.

The books we read as children often shape us. What books did you love as a child? What do you think you learned from them? We would love to hear your experiences and memories in the comments below.

Michele Meier Vosberg, Ph.D. is a writer and freelance educator. She left her career of over thirty years in order to create the life of her dreams. She is passionate about helping others understand their unique personality and gifts and design their best lives. Michele is married, has two grown daughters and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Connect with Michele at liferedesign101.com

The post 6 Lessons Baby Boomers Learned from Classic Children’s Books appeared first on Age Specific.

[newstfionline]

Gen Z Is Coming to Your Office

By Janet Adamy, WSJ, Sept. 6, 2018

Sean McKeon was 11 years old when the 2008 financial crisis shot anxiety through his life in Hudson, Ohio. He remembers his father coming home stressed after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the bank where he worked. A teacher asked classmates if their parents cut back that Christmas. They all said yes.

That unsettling time shaped the job plans he hatched in high school. “I needed to work really hard and find a career that’s recession-proof,” says Mr. McKeon, now 21. He set his sights on a Big Four accounting firm. He interned at EY in Cleveland and will become an auditor there after graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, next year.

About 17 million members of Generation Z are now adults and starting to enter the U.S. workforce, and employers haven’t seen a generation like this since the Great Depression. They came of age during recessions, financial crises, war, terror threats, school shootings and under the constant glare of technology and social media. The broad result is a scarred generation, cautious and hardened by economic and social turbulence.

Gen Z totals about 67 million, including those born roughly beginning in 1997 up until a few years ago. Its members are more eager to get rich than the past three generations but are less interested in owning their own businesses, according to surveys. As teenagers many postponed risk-taking rites of passage such as sex, drinking and getting driver’s licenses. Now they are eschewing student debt, having seen prior generations drive it to records, and trying to forge careers that can withstand economic crisis.

Early signs suggest Gen Z workers are more competitive and pragmatic, but also more anxious and reserved, than millennials, the generation of 72 million born from 1981 to 1996, according to executives, managers, generational consultants and multidecade studies of young people. Gen Zers are also the most racially diverse generation in American history: Almost half are a race other than non-Hispanic white.

With the generation of baby boomers retiring and unemployment at historic lows, Gen Z is filling immense gaps in the workforce. Employers, plagued by worker shortages, are trying to adapt.

LinkedIn Corp. and Intuit Inc. have eased requirements that certain hires hold bachelor’s degrees to reach young adults who couldn’t afford college. At campus recruiting events, EY is raffling off computer tablets because competition for top talent is intense.

Companies are reworking training so it replicates YouTube-style videos that appeal to Gen Z workers reared on smartphones.

“They learn new information much more quickly than their predecessors,” says Ray Blanchette, CEO of Ruby Tuesday Inc., which introduced phone videos to teach young workers to grill burgers and slow-cook ribs. Growing up immersed in mobile technology also means “it’s not natural or comfortable for them necessarily to interact one-on-one,” he says.

Demographers see parallels with the Silent Generation, a parsimonious batch born between 1928 and 1945 that carried the economic scars of the Great Depression and World War II into adulthood while reaping the rewards of a booming postwar economy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gen Z is setting out in the workplace at one of the most opportune times in decades, with an unemployment rate of 4%.

“They’re more like children of the 1930s, if children of the 1930s had learned to think, learn and communicate while attached to hand-held supercomputers,” says Bruce Tulgan, a management consultant at RainmakerThinking in Whitneyville, Conn.

Gen Z’s attitudes about work reflect a craving for financial security. The share of college freshmen nationwide who prioritize becoming well off rose to around 82% when Gen Z began entering college a few years ago, according to the University of California, Los Angeles. That is the highest level since the school began surveying the subject in 1966. The lowest point was 36% in 1970.

The oldest Gen Zers also are more interested in making work a central part of their lives and are more willing to work overtime than most millennials, according to the University of Michigan’s annual survey of teens.

“They have a stronger work ethic,” says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor whose book “iGen” analyzes the group. “They’re really scared that they’re not going to get the good job that everybody says they need to make it.”

Just 30% of 12th-graders wanted to be self-employed in 2016, according to the Michigan survey, which has measured teen attitudes and behaviors since the mid-1970s. That is a lower rate than baby boomers, Gen X, the group born between 1965 and 1980, and most millennials when they were high-school seniors. Gen Z’s name follows Gen X and Gen Y, an early moniker for the millennial generation.

College Works Painting, which hires about 1,600 college students a year to run small painting businesses across the country, is having difficulty hiring branch managers because few applicants have entrepreneurial skills, says Matt Stewart, the Irvine, Calif., company’s co-founder.

“Your risk is failure, and I do think people are more afraid of failure than they used to be,” he says.

A few years ago Mr. Stewart noticed that Gen Z hires behaved differently than their predecessors. When the company launched a project to support branch managers, millennials excitedly teamed up and worked together. Gen Z workers wanted individual recognition and extra pay. The company introduced bonuses of up to $3,000 to encourage them to participate.

After seeing their millennial predecessors drown in student debt, Gen Z is trying to avoid that fate. The share of freshmen who used loans to pay for college peaked in 2009 at 53% and has declined almost every year since, falling to 47% in 2016, according to the UCLA survey.

Denise Villa, chief executive of the Center for Generational Kinetics in Austin, says focus groups show some Gen Z members are choosing less-expensive, lower-status colleges to lessen debt loads. Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show that nationwide, overall student loan balances have grown at an average annual rate of 6% in the past four years, down sharply from a 16% annual growth rate in the previous decade.

Lana Demelo, a 20-year-old in San Jose, Calif., saw her older sister take on debt when she became the first person in their family to attend college. “I just watched her go through all those pressures and I felt like me personally, I didn’t want to go through them,” says Ms. Demelo. She enrolled in Year Up, a work training program that places low-income high-school graduates in internships, got hired as a project coordinator at LinkedIn and attends De Anza College in Cupertino part-time.

Gen Z is literally sober. Data from the Michigan survey and federal statistics show they were less likely to have tried alcohol, gotten their driver’s licenses, had sex or gone out regularly without their parents than teens of the previous two or three generations, Ms. Twenge, the San Diego State professor, found.

They grew up trusting adults, and Gen Z employees want managers who will step in to help them handle uncomfortable situations like conflicts with co-workers and provide granular feedback, says Mr. Tulgan, the management consultant.

When Mr. Tulgan’s company surveyed thousands of Gen Z members about what mattered most to them at work, he heard repeatedly that they wanted a “safe environment.” He is advising clients to create small work teams so managers have time to nurture them.

“I was in no rush to get a driver’s license,” says Joshua Berja, a 21-year-old San Francisco resident who waited until he turned 18 to get one. He lives with his parents to save money, runs errands for his mother and picks his father up from work.

Gen Z is reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression as teens and young adults than previous generations. About one in eight college freshmen felt depressed frequently in 2016, the highest level since UCLA began tracking it more than three decades ago.

That is one reason EY three years ago launched a program originally called “are u ok?”--now called “We Care”--a companywide mental health program that includes a hotline for struggling workers.

Mr. Stewart, of College Works Painting, says he wasn’t aware of any depressed employees 15 years ago but now deals frequently with workers battling mental-health issues. He says he has two workers with bipolar disorder that the company wants to promote but can’t “because they’ll disappear for a week at a time on the down cycle.”

Smartphones may be partly to blame. Much of Gen Z’s socializing takes place via text messages and social media platforms--a shift that has eroded natural interactions and allowed bullying to play out in front of wider audiences.

In the small town of Conneaut Lake, Penn., Corrina Del Greco and her friends joined Snapchat and Instagram in middle school. Ms. Del Greco, 19, checked them every hour and fended off requests for prurient photos from boys. She shut down her social media accounts after deciding they “had a little too much power over my self-esteem,” she said.

That has helped her focus on studying at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., to become a software engineer, a career she sees as recession-proof. When the last downturn hit, she remembers cutting back on gas and eating out because her parents’ music-lesson business softened.

“I learned a lot about the value of money,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a very secure lifestyle, secure income.”

She says the negative experience with social media made her want a professional LinkedIn page, and she took a seminar at college to learn how to do that.

The flip side of being digital natives is that Gen Z is even more adept with technology than millennials. Natasha Stough, Americas campus recruiting director at EY in Chicago, was wowed by a young hire who created a bot to answer questions on the company’s Facebook careers page.

To lure more Gen Z workers, EY rolled out video technology that allows job candidates to record answers to interview questions and submit them electronically.

Getting employees comfortable with face-to-face interactions takes work, Ms. Stough says. “We do have to coach our interns, ‘If you’re sitting five seats away from the client and they’re around the corner, go talk to them.’”

Mr. McKeon, the Ohio student, sees a silver lining growing up during tumultuous times. He used money from his grandfather and jobs at McDonald’s and a house painting company to build a stock portfolio now worth about $5,000. He took school more seriously knowing that “the world’s gotten a lot more competitive.”

“With any hardship that people endure in life, they either get stronger or it paralyzes them,” Mr. McKeon says. “These hardships have offered a great opportunity for us to get stronger.”

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

This is a story I wrote 6 years ago. I thought I would share with you again

___________________________________________________________

Friday, May 22, 2015

Old Apostate

By Stephen Jay Morris

©Scientific Morality

Up in Oregon, I use to walk my dogs on this dirt road that lead to the backwoods. There were some many trees on that path that the only source of sunlight was beams that shined through the old growth trees. Up a mile up the road was this old trailer. It was nestled between these 2 tall Douglas fir trees. In front of the trailer was garbage like old beer cans and tin cans with candy wrappers and a campfire with a soapbox. Some middle age guy lived in there. I would see occasionally walk up the trail by his lonesome. In Oregonian forests there were a lot of these loners living in trailers. I met a lot of Vietnam vets living like this. I thought nothing of it.

One summer day, it wasn’t raining. The broadcasters of the radio called these rare days a sun-break. Oregonians on sun-break days would do gardening. I saw this man cutting back weeds to clear the trail leading to his trailer. He was normal size white guy about 6 feet one. He had a thin frame dressed up in flannel shirt and faded blue jeans. He wore brown working boots and a black nit cap. His long hair was tied into a ponytail in which it went to the middle of his back. He had a trimmed gray beard and wore John Lennon round glasses. If you had seen him, you would just dismiss him as an old eccentric hippie. I would venture to say he was in his late 60’s. However, everybody has a story. I approached him and complimented on his work. He had a familiar accent. It sounded very Californian. I asked him where he was from. He said: Long Beach. That was such coincidence, my former home; “San Pedro” was across the bay from me. When he spoke, he would stare toward the distance to reflect images from the past. His green eyes looked inward in his mind. I’ll call him: Gordon. He made his living as a fisherman working on boats in Astoria Oregon.

I have met a lot of Vietnam veterans in my time. Only a few were well adjusted family men. The majority of vets I have met suffered from all types of ailments, from alcoholism to mental illness. Decades and decades, the political right acted they had the monopoly on patriotism. They claimed they were the number one supporters of our troops who gave the ultimate sacrifice by dying. Funny thing about dead soldiers they can’t tell fake patriots to shut the fuck up. All the homeless vets are ignored and left to die. There is this right wing talking point that homeless vets don’t exist. Now I was going to get a lesson in truth.

Objectively stated: Not everybody that grew up in the Baby Boomer was a left wing rebel. Most boomers were clean-cut Americans who did what they were required for them to do with The Protestant Work ethic guiding them. If you were a student, you studied hard and if you were a worker, you learn a skill or trade. Then you get married and raise a family. A lot of boomers were conformists and devote Christians. A lot of boomers were like their parents and were anti-Communists. A lot of Boomers had fathers who fought in World War 2 and wanted to make their dads proud of them by enlisting in the military and defending freedom. A lot of Vets got poisoned by Agent Orange or got Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Some soldiers became drug addicts while fighting in Nam. This was to self-medicate to endure the horrors of war. One more observation about Boomers, a lot of Vietnam Vets became left wing rebels after serving in Nam.

Gordon did a lot of talking during my encounter with him. It’s difficult to remember everything he told me. It went like this: When I was going to college in 60’s, I joined a conservative group called: Young Americans For Freedom. We had an alliance with this anti-Castro group. Some times my fellow students would get drunk and go out to find some Hippies to beat up. I hated the communists so much that I went to a recruiter for the army and signed on the dotted line in the office. The night before I had to report to duty, we had a drunken party. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. After boot camp they sent me to Nam.

When I got there, it was a chaotic hellhole. You could smell brunt bodies everywhere. One time on patrol, I thought I saw Charlie and I shot him. It was a 10-year-old child. I killed a child! My commanding officer told me to forget it. It was part of the job. I now have this recurring nightmare of that incident. I still see in my minds eye that child’s expression of horror in his face. Every fucking night I see that innocent face. It was that hate that was injected in my brain. They told me we were fighting against communism, but it was really for American Imperialism. Now, if some schmuck comes up to and say’s: Thank you is for your service. I say: You want to show your appreciation! Pay more taxes so I can get better health care! They are all hypocrites and I hate them more than the Viet Cong. Then he asked the question I was hoping he wouldn’t ask: So? Steve…did your serve? I softly replied: No I didn’t. Then he asked: Did you protest against the war? I sheepishly answered…Yes…Yes I did. Gordon embraced me and said in my left ear: Thank you for your protest. I was pleasantly surprise he did that action.

I would never see Gordon again, but I’ll never forget him.

[bbnibini]

i'm sorry asdfghjkl but do you mind giving the general spoilers for season 2? i stopped playing for a few months and now my team are too weak and i'm stuck in Lesson 25 😭 but i'm dying to know wth happened wheezes

Oh wow. You must have been one of the few who saw that mess of a post I've written when I was really tired and sleep-deprived. ;; Looking back on it...it does seem pretty unlikely. Hahaha, which is why I deleted it; But! I've now made my bed, so I suppose I'd lie on it too! (take note that this is a very condensed and slightly sleep deprived, I have-online-class-in-a-few-hours vers. so it's not the best summary but I tried:)

1. Christopher Peugeot, the author of TSL is actually Simeon (as it was already heavily hinted). He was requested to write a script for a play for the school festival. Levi finds out and LOSES HIS MIND. (His fanboying is p cute actually hahaha). He offers to make costumes for the play. Levi is just really cute in the play arc, basically haha.

2. We also find out Simeon has a rather...ruthless side to him? I forgot which character but he called him a sadist. He was rather strict when rehearsing for the play and his whole demeanor changed while overseeing it.

3. We went to an amusement park. Had a cute date with Mammon and our "child" (Little D#2 calls him Papa lmao my favourite part tbh) idk if you read this already tho. Some "step on me mommy" moments with the Demon Bros. We do some OP shit. The Demon Bros totally simped for it (despite them saying otherwise).

4. We had to prepare for exams so Satan had to tutor us. He's being very adorable while teaching us and even meows at some point. Or was it us that meowed? Forgot. Some of the bros + angels also join in. We learn Solomon is mostly responsible for the tutoring in Purgatory Hall but since he is currently investigating something with Lord Dia, the angels went to us for that.

5. There was a dance. Your choices mattered for it. STAY LOYAL=get rewarded (but break others' hearts in the process). Hoe around=everyone's happy. Until they find out you are hoeing around. Pretty funny scense ensue.The pseudo route arc was pretty cute and I wish they'd implement it more. (There's also a cute bonus if you choose not to dance with anyone ;) )

6. Asmo gets a bit of chara devt in the Blood Moon Arc. Levi in the time loop arc. I only remembered being a mess of feelings while reading it I'm sorry because MY BABY ASMO IS GETTING THE ATTENTION HE DESERVES T^T

7. Beel gets hungry, fricks shit up with the reaper! But! No worries! Solomon's best buddies with the Reaper (he's totally lying btw He has no friends), they fix that up by trespassing in his house! Wooh! Everyone happy!

8. Until everyone isn't. Lucifer's dead. Sort of. Solomon was about to tell us what Dia had been keeping from us then we got a cliffhanger T_T

9. But he's not actually dead. He just got amnesia! :') But that's not good too. (Besides him acting really adorable while in said amnesia). MC got OP cause of angel blood + tons of pacts with powerful demons that it caused an imbalance in the world + caused Luci to do the forgetti. The only way to literally save the 3 realms is to become as shady as boomer wizard (oh yeah we find out Solomon is as old as fossils too) or take the reaper dagger and dissolve all our pacts with the bros. :(

That's about it! Sorry for the weird summary haha. I was worried about character limit. I'm sure other blogs have summarised the events better.

[millennials37-blog]

Crying of the Disenchanted Millennial Worker and the Morals to Be Learned From It

'When you want to convert a person to your view, go to where he is standing, take him by the hand and guide him.'

Thomas Aquinas.

One time a college professor had his students check and evaluate the future of about 200 students from a ghetto. His students never gave the students from the ghetto any chance to succeed, indicating that, 'Each boy never had the chance to succeed.'

Years later, another professor came across the earlier study and together with his own students followed up on the study. Their study was however quite revealing! With the exception of 20 students, 176 of the students had become lawyers, doctors and businessmen.

This second professor was surprised and decided to pursue the study further by interviewing some of the men. In each case, came the same response, 'There was a teacher.'

Fortunately, this very teacher was still alive, so the professor sought her out. The teacher was then asked the magic formula she had used in turning the students around and consequently pulling the boys out of the slums into successful citizens. The teacher's eye sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile, 'It's really very simple,' she replied. 'I loved those boys.'

Putting this into perspective, it was this teacher's principle that I tried preaching during a training program we conducted recently for the middle level managers in a government agency in Nigeria. You see these managers were of the opinion that as a result of a system that encouraged warped recruitment, discipline amongst some of their millennial subordinates was at its lowest ebb and thus most were consequently uncontrollable.

So most of these managers were of the mindset that there was nothing they could do to change these indiscipline millennials adding that they were better off leaving them to do as they pleased. I argued that this would affect morale amongst their subordinates if not checked but they would not have any of it.

Until one of the participating managers (a woman) then shared with the class a story of how she had used this same principle to turn one of her millennial staff around. According to her, this millennial (a young woman of about twenty two years) was posted to her department and she was charged to directly supervise her by her own immediate superior officer.

This young woman displayed so much antisocial behavior that no person would have anything to do with her. For a start, her dressing was said to be outlandish. She chewed bubble gum in the office premises without care. To crown it all, she was said to be rude and could pick up a fight with just about anybody for a very flimsy reason. So other staff practically avoided her. It was as if this young woman was posted to the department to punish this manager. She knew if she did not arrest the situation it would snowball and destroy the work within her department.

She then decided to directly engage the young woman. One day, she invited the young woman into her office and asked her, 'Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you openly rebellious? Why do you take delight in going against the organization's rules? Why don't you relate well with others?' Questions, and several other questions.

The manager said rather than the young woman answering, she broke down into tears. Uncontrollable tears. The manager was shocked because she never expected such outpouring of emotions. After calming the young woman down, the manager then asked her why she had broken down in tears so uncontrollably and displayed so much emotion. see now millennial media

The young woman then related to her the life story. How she had never enjoyed life as a youth. How she was married off to a man she never loved immediately after college. How the marriage broke down. How she became a single parent. How she was never given a chance to make amends to her life. How she had been written off by virtually everybody.

The manager thereafter started showing more interest in the young woman. She started treating her like her own daughter. Gradually, the young woman started changing her attitude to work and to her co-workers. She shed off her antisocial behaviors and became a new person. Eventually, she got married to one of the male staff in the department. Talk about a woman nobody wanted to touch even with a long pole!

Now to the lessons in these two stories. There are several. However I want to highlight these 6.

Always expect the best from the millennial workers you are leading: You see when you expect good things from those you are leading they will in most cases go to great lengths to live up to your expectations. When you expect the worst they will meet those expectations with uncanny accuracy. If you therefore believe those you lead have the best of intentions you will get the best out of them. Talk about the Pygmalion effect!

You should always endeavor to make thorough study of the needs/wants of the millennial: Those you lead have belief systems and until you learn what they value and want in life, you cannot expect to build a successful plan for motivating them. The millennial in particular are peculiar in nature. Their needs differ from that of the baby boomers and the generation X. Therefore rather than judging an underperforming worker, you should listen to his or her frustrations. Just like the manager did in the story above. It will stand you in good stead in motivating the millennial.

Establish high standards for excellence for the worker: The millennial is never inspired by a job where nothing is demanded of him. Where there is no challenge. Millennials have high expectations about their jobs and therefore expect more from it than just paychecks. Challenge the millennial by demanding high standards from him and see what will happen.

Employ the use of successful models to encourage them to be successful: Endeavor to use realistic examples of successful people to show the millennial you are trying to motivate that another person has made the choice he is being encouraged to take and succeeded and if he has been successful he could too.

Recognize and applaud their achievements/accomplishments: Millennials require recognition for their achievements. By praising good quality, you insure the repetition of such effort. Therefore by acknowledging and applauding the achievement of your millennial subordinates you are encouraging the repetition of such accomplishments.

Endeavor to engage the millennial: A Gallop poll has shown that engaged workers are more productive, profitable, loyal and customer focused. The Conference Board found out that highly engaged employees outperform their disengaged colleagues by 20 - 28%. The Hay Group on their part in their survey discovered that engaged employees generate 40% more revenue than their disengaged counterparts. In the same survey, of those who are highly engaged, 68% believe that they can impact costs in their job or unit versus 19% of the disengaged.

In another Gallop Poll, it was shown that engaged employees take an average of nearly 60% fewer sick days per year than disengaged employees. The Corporate Leadership Council in their survey found out that engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave an organization than the disengaged counterpart.

From all the research carried out and reported above it was found out that an immediate manager possesses the most effective influence on employee's level of engagement!

[curdinway-blog]

Spirited Away

Spirited Away is the greatest anime film of all time.  Its accolades stretch to astonishing heights; it won the Japan Academy Award for Best Picture, is the only foreign film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and has been widely acclaimed by film critics as one of the finest animated films of the century.  It smashed box office records in Japan, overtaking James Cameron’s fabled Titanic.  It enjoyed robust box office drawings in the United States and worldwide as well.  To this day, it is the most famous work from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and one of the most beloved and iconic animated features to ever grace the screen.

If there is any work that invites immediate comparisons, it is MGM’s classic The Wizard of Oz.  Like that film, Spirited Away has plenty going on beneath the surface, but is celebrated most for the sheer scope of its imagination, bursts of color, and visual inventiveness.  Miyazaki literally births a whole new world, limitless in its possibilities and bizarre to our normal expectations, and utterly rich in wonder.  There are absurdly large babies, talking frogs, pieces of soot performing menial labor, and a 6-handed man working a furnace.  The principal setting is one of the all-time greats; a dazzling, ritzy bathhouse for wayward spirits where humans are not welcome.  

Into this strange new environment drops Chihiro, a girl still struggling to deal with an impending move.  A new home and school end up seeming pretty mild by the time the girl’s parents turn into pigs and she is stuck wiling with an unscrupulous witch and a horde of wacky creatures for her freedom and survival.  Spirited Away is a growing-up story, and a great one at that.  Critics and audience have marveled at the way Chihiro progresses through the movie from apathetic, weak, and frightened to a newly self-reliant and strong person. The movie has also been lauded for its cleverly submerged themes.  The problems faced by Haku, one of the resident spirits, and an appallingly gooped-up “stink spirit” are concerned nods at pollution and environmental concerns, while the workers’ lust for gold and Chihiro’s parents’ rude advances at a food stand are condemnations of greed.  

The characters are some of Miyazaki’s best, and oh so memorable. Yubaba is a manipulative and opportunistic witch, whom you might hate if she were not so damn good at running that bathhouse.  Haku is an amnesiac, whose current condition has him struggling to do good as he grows increasingly cold.  Lin is a hilariously sour woman who takes Chihiro on as her protégé.  But the best of all is No-Face, a sprite who goes from sad and lonely outcast to absolute blood-curdling nightmare in about zero to sixty, then somehow manages to reverse course again.

Leading and anchoring everything is Chihiro.  Surely one of Miyazaki’s finest heroines, Chihiro was reportedly fashioned after the daughter of a friend who visited the director on occasion.  As stated previously, her personal growth is remarkable characterization and a true joy.  However, I have always been bothered by reviewers’ initial assertions of Chihiro. “Lazy”, “cowardly”, and “whiny” are common adjectives; even Miyazaki seemed to share the sentiment, referring to her and real-life girls her age as “lazy bums.”  It is worth noting that the people Chihiro was a stand-in for are now roughly my age.  That’s right; Miyazaki, a Baby Boomer, was trashing Millennials before it was cool (joking, of course).  It is interesting that my assertion of Chihiro is so much different…and perhaps that is because I identify with Chihiro so much.  Kids fear differently than adults do.  Irrational fears predominate, and are often not given serious credence by adult figures…such as Chihiro’s parents.  Childhood fears are often more deeply intense as well; catastrophic, paralyzing events made worse by the fact that children have not yet developed the emotional maturity and skills to manage them.  To me, it is not at all unnatural for Chihiro to be depressed and upset by such an upending life event.  I had difficulty managing my various fears well past her age.  Chihiro’s apparent apathy may be a side-effect of her emotional struggles; alternatively, they may also simply represent a relative inexperience with work which is not out of place for someone of her years and maturity.  

Moreover, Chihiro has a good heart.  She consistently acts with sensitivity, compassion, and generosity throughout the movie, letting in No-Face when he is left outside in the rain, pursuing friendship and meaningful relationships over wealth, and risking her own safety and comfort repeatedly to help loved ones and strangers alike. This is in marked opposition to the characters around her, who manage to be far more efficient, resilient, and self-reliant than her, but are also motivated by empty capital (gold), are consistently self-serving, and lack emotional warmth and compassion.  When Miyazaki criticized girls like Chihiro as “lazy bums”, he also added that he knew they had tremendous potential as well.  Notice that when the “stink spirit” enters the bathhouse, it is Chihiro who recognizes the problem instead of just trying to get the job over with and the unwanted guest out.  Her removal of tangles of garbage from the spirit’s side is symbolic of environmental clean-up; suggesting Miyazaki believes Chihiro and her kind will bring greater emphasis and effort towards meaningful environmental protection.  Extrapolate further, and you can say the same for social empathy and non-materialism. If we truly take this analysis to the extreme and consider Chihiro to be a surrogate for Millennials and the bathhouse workers to be a surrogate for Baby Boomers, an interesting dynamic emerges. Chihiro learns from her stewards’ tough love to become an independent, resilient, and confident actor so that she can bring her inner disposition forth to do good in the world.  At the same time, Chihiro gradually thaws her teachers, so that they can act more empathetically and selflessly.  This successful generational interplay helps both parties to better themselves; perhaps, an applicable lesson for today’s divided society.

One of the finest aspects of Spirited Away is in that it refuses to sugarcoat the process of growing up. There are a lot of joys to be had, for sure; Chihiro has a grand adventure, after all, making new friends, overcoming obstacles, and opening her horizon to beautiful new things. However, there is definitely a darker side towards becoming an adult.  Fear and uncertainty are an easy observation in her maturation and in ours; the only way to improve one’s mettle is to test it.  Less apparent to me, at least the first time around, was Miyazaki’s less-than-flattering critique of the modern workplace.  Essentially, once Chihiro becomes employed at the bathhouse she is treated as an adult, and we become proxy to a fascinating array of observations.  First, there is the perception of being trapped.  Whether it is Yubaba’s contract, Chihiro’s obligations to her now-pig family, Lin’s lamentations that she would love to leave the place, or the liberation presented by a train ticket away, the bathhouse’s oppressive atmosphere is an easy stand-in for many modern workplaces.  There is also notably an aspect of distance and isolation to everyone who works there; in Haku’s case, the longer he has worked there, the colder and more aloof he has become.  The necessity to watch out for one’s self as an adult separates us from one another, Miyazaki argues.  That effect is a mere trickle into the core vein running throughout the movie: loneliness.

Notice the water which surrounds the bathhouse.  On my second viewing, it struck me that the supernatural flooding is not merely a plot device to prevent Chihiro from escaping her situation; it is also a visual representation of the world as viewed by an adult.  The infinite horizon of its waters provokes the vast expansion of worldview that comes with growing up, but also an increasing sense of solitude, emptiness, and personal reflection.  Joe Hisaishi’s wonderfully sensitive score frequently adopts a longing, minimalist tone, and we feel a certain absence and sadness in the events happening onscreen.  Of all Chihiro’s various trials, the impact of loneliness strikes most devastating and realistic of all.  Miyazaki’s solution to this common adult malady is friendship.  The essential nature of friends to a normal and healthy adult life is driven home by Chihiro’s experiences.  Fear, threats, and harsh treatment do not significantly transform Chihiro.  It is only when she is approached from a place of support and caring that she finds courage and stability to act with decision, and the confidence in herself to succeed and respond to failures.  Even as relationships with family fade, the relationships we form with others can help us reform a socially abundant life so that we can thrive and be happy.

Growing up is a process.  Fraught with peril and difficulties, chock-full of excitement and rewards, it is as tumultuous and constant throughout life as it is necessary.  The fear we have as children towards change may mute somewhat as we grow older, but it is still ever-present, accompanied by a second, sharper note…nostalgia.  The takeaway message of Spirited Away is that we don’t really have to be afraid, because we’ve been there before.  By the end of the film, it is not entirely clear what Chihiro will be facing next.  She has no guarantee of ever revisiting her friends at the bathhouse, or her friend from her former school.  But she has stopped looking backward towards what has been, and is looking down the road to whatever comes next, reassured by the fact that whatever happens, she can handle it.  That is what matters.

That is what growing up is all about.

[rptv-starwars]

Huge Ass-mitage (Hugh Armitage), the second Doofus Shill extraordinaire this week.

The person pictured above (referred to as Huge Ass-mitage going forward) wrote a cringe article about Star Wars plot holes (most having to do with the original trilogy and prequels).  It’s a pathetically transparent attempt at defending the Abrams/Johnson sequel trilogy (otherwise why bring this up now?).

I’m not arguing whether the sequels were bad or good (there are some things I like about them, and some things I don’t); that’s irrelevant. What is nauseating and loathsome is how this writer and others like him try to hide their true agenda (like the one I posted about 4 days ago).

“Use the convoluted explantions, luke”? That tagline is #SAD. This millennial sounds like an untalented baby boomer.

Link to the original article on the Digital Spy website is shown below, followed by his 9 plotholes and his explanation for each (and my rebuttal):

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/star-wars-biggest-plot-holes-060700779.html

1:  Huge Ass-mitage writes that “Obi-Wan's decision to give Luke his father's surname and hide him on Anakin Skywalker's home planet Tatooine (in his stepbrother's care, no less) was a really dumb idea.”

I partly agree with this one, except for two things:

a) It only became a plothole when the sequels came out (it was not a major issue with the original trilogy), and

b) The writer assumes Tatooine was on Vader's radar. I think Vader had more important things to worry about (like terrorizing the galaxy); he wouldn’t be keeping track of everyone on some distant planet. In addition, since this writer decided to bring in the prequels for his argument, he should also know that Tatooine is controlled by the Hutts and so Vader and the Empire would not have any business poking around in that part of the galaxy for 18 years.

Sloppy (on the part of the prequels) for sure , but I would not call it a MAJOR plot hole. #FAIL.

2. "Vader forgot C-3PO”. He claims this is a major plot hole (it's a minor one) but then proceeds to explain why it isn't (stating that Vader and C3PO don't really interact in the original trilogy, which I agree with). Second, it only became a plot hole with the prequels (that is not the fault of the original trilogy).  #FAIL.

3. “Obi-Wan didn't recognise the droids either” I partly agree with him on this one, but again, it wasn’t a problem with the original trilogy (it only became a problem when the prequels came out), and second, Obi Wan was not one to become attached to droids the way Luke was, and with all the droids Obi-Wan came in contact with, how would he remember an astromech and protocol droid from decades ago? #FAIL.

4. “Rey can speak droid and Wookiee” This is more of a failure of character development than a plothole, but Huge Ass-mitage tries to explain this away by citing some external reference material that most people have never heard of let alone read, called "Rey's survival guide", which was probably written specifically to fill in gaping plot holes. This reference says that Rey taught herself wookie and droid language in her spare time to be able to speak with wookie traders that pass through town (even though you never see them on Jakku. LOL).

And why wookie? Why not Bocce? or Walrus man language? Or whatever that giant praying mantis speaks? It’s just a little too convenient that it was Wookie.

Additionally, the writer’s argument still doesn't explain why nobody else in the star wars universe bothers to learn droid language (despite interacting with them every day) and just rely on readouts and protocol droids. But Rey decides to learn droid (and as far as we know she’s the only one). #FAIL

5. Rey can fly the Millennium Falcon?

The writer cites the same external reference nobody has read (”Rey's Survival Guide”) to explain that Rey owns an old Y-wing computer display that allows her to "run flight sims".

The problem with this argument is that this is never shown or alluded to in TFA.  When Finn asks her how she flew so well, her response wasn’t “I take flight simulation lessons on my computer”, but rather, “I don’t know!”  Lastly, simulation and real flying are different; ask any pilot.

Huge Ass-mitage also writes the following: “she [Rey] had a speeder, which is apparently all Luke Skywalker needed to help him become a crack pilot. Well, that and the Force.”

WRONG: A speeder is like a car, not an aircraft.  That Luke is a pilot is alluded to at least twice: once by Obi-Wan, and a second time when Luke says he use to shoot womp rats in his T-16, which we can safely assume is a spaceship (not a landspeeder). #FAIL

6. Luke's Jedi training with Yoda lasts about a day

Not really. The sense one gets from watching ESB is that Luke’s training lasts over a number of days (possibly more; we don’t know for sure how much time passes; Han Solo has been on the run from Jabba The Hutt for months or years apparently, so why not Han and Leia from the Empire?).

Contrast this with TFA, where Rey meets Han, he takes her to the cantina, she gets kidnapped by Kylo, then she escapes - it is clear this happens over no more than 1 or 2 days (it actually looks like it happened over a number of hours), and NO TRAINING WHATSOEVER is ever shown in that time span.

Regardless, I do agree with the writer that Luke’s training was too short a time when compared to the training jedis received in the Prequels. However that would make The Prequels more accurate than the original trilogy, which would then make the sequels a complete joke. #FAIL

7. Galen Erso (the Death Star engineer)

The writer says that this character sent a message to the rebels about the weakness of the death star, but did not send the plans as well (thereby forcing the Rebels to go on a huge quest which leaves most of them (including his daughter) dead? He also claims that the death star was “designed badly” because of this weakness and is therefore a plot hole as well.

My response is this: Nobody (except for one or two people I know of) ever considered the Death Star a plot hole. We just assumed like all villains or obstacles (Achilles’ heel, the wall in LOTR Two Towers, etc) sometimes there is a weakness you can exploit.  I mean, the Hindenburg was a feat of engineering that had a major flaw (which ended tragically). #FAIL.

8. R2-D2 wakes up just in time... for no reason

The writer of this article claims that BB8 having the other part of the map “causes R2-D2 to boot up”. But how would BB8 know to trigger R2-D2?  And why bother not being booted up already? It’s not like R2-D2 has to stay turned off (he can be recharged).

The writer then tries to explain how R2-D2 having the map is a plot hole (which it isn't).  The plot hole is not how R2-D2 has the map, but why he has it in the first place, if Luke didn't want to be found. #FAIL

9. Leia couldn't have remembered her mother

This one I actually agree with the writer (Huge Ass-mitage / Hugh Armitage). Unfortunately he tries to explain it away (again) with external sources (the star wars comics, which were only written to fill in the plot holes, so that doesn't count).

In summation, this hack “writer” from DIGITAL SPY is either a shill for Disney Lucasfilm or has absolutely no idea what the hell he’s talking about (maybe both).  I have no idea how people like him get jobs.

[mrpatrouiousachatz1993]

Why Bill Maher is wrong and he needs to wake up.

TW; Some things in this post maybe seen as a offensive when it comes to terminology. This post is designed to call out people who use offensive terminology and bigoted language.  Bill Maher once again goes on a racist tangent and blames "political correctness". Let me say something I have confronted my grandparents for supporting his show and constantly said by them watching Real Time with Bill Maher is giving into his racist, homophobic and transphobic ideas. The man even supported the discrimination of transgender people and here I am the transgender grandson. I have to constantly YELL at my family for misgendering me.  Now wonder why they do it Bill Maher probably thinks it is okay to misgender transgender people. I mean Bill Maher says it is okay to call COVID-19 the "Chinese Virus" all because it came from China. So we should blame the Chinese? We should be judgmental of Chinese people? You know what that is? RACISM!  But Bill Maher claims "It's not racist". Bill Maher then went on attacking liberals for supporting Middle Eastern Cultures and called Muslims evil. I mean he has been doing that since the 9/11 attacks. Yet he supported Obama whose middle name is Hussein, and Obama was a Christian. Hussein is Arabic for good, handsome, and beautiful. Obama wasn’t even Arabic.  

Bill Maher has been publicly racist and bigoted for decades and takes no accountability except that one time when he said the N word. But this is a man who defended calling COVID-19 "The Chinese Virus"   He has defended Megyn Kelly on her comments about how she thought black face was okay to wear on Halloween.  Not to mention he called the #Metoo Movement as  "McCarthyite" and he also defended Chris Matthews when Chris Matthews was accused of Sexual Harassment.   Not to mention he got booed for defending Micheal Bloomberg's Stop and Frisk policy and his response was "Keep booing that is how you lost the last election." 

Look if you are a moderate fine that is your belief and I am not going to argue with you. I will agree to disagree with you. But when you endorse the racist, homophobic, transphobic, and bigoted things Maher has said.  You are endorsing a culture that Donald Trump wanted. You are endorsing going backwards into the 1950s or further back.  

Now my grandfather before he died from a heart attack a month ago, he was willing to read articles on how Maher is bad and he agreed what Maher said was wrong. Then he sent me some things on how Bill Maher is good.  There are some things I do agree with Maher about. He supports Medicare for All, I agree CEOS of corporations should be paying higher taxes, I also agree that if religion (more specifically extreme Christian Nationalism) wants to interfere with our laws and want the laws to allow to discriminate on the bases of religion then churches should be taxed. But when Bill Maher opens his mouth about minorities groups, he needs to shut the fuck up. I also disagree with the dictatorship in China in regard to a 1 child rule. However, when he talks about social justice in the US  he needs to shut the fuck up because he doesn't know jack shit. I would not be surprised if he thinks it is okay to call people the R word when even the professionals stopped using the terms Mental Retardation  or Mentally Retarded and changed the terminology to intellectually disabled and developmentally disabled because of the R word and terms like MR have been used to bully and harass kids in school. It also has been used to call people when they do something foolish which then stigmatizes a minority group.  Listen calling COVID-19 the "Chinese Virus" is wrong and bigoted for many reasons.  It stigmatizes a group of people. When the AIDs and HIV Pandemic first happened it was referred to in the US as the "Gay disease".  But yet AIDs and HIV are not necessarily always transmitted from gay sex. It can be transmitted from dirty needles. It can be transmitted from blood transfusions. My grandmother is a retired nurse and she once had a patient with AIDs and when the doctor's came in and she told them that that the patients had AIDs the doctors did not want to treat the patient because they thought the patient was gay but how the patient got it was from a blood transfusion. Also AIDs  Not to mention we already have discriminated against Asians way before WWII. Bill Maher needs to educate himself and look at why the things he says when talking about marginalized groups is WRONG. This has nothing to do with what he calls as "PC Culture" or "PC Policing".  

Maybe Bill Maher should be calling out the FDA for their long ban on MSM (men who have sex with men) from donating blood, then rule changed to 1 year of no sex, now changed the rule to 3 months of no sex for men who have sex with men because America is short on blood donations, but yet lesbians, bisexual women, pansexual women, and straight people can have all the sex they want. Transgender people can donate blood just as long as they select either male or female. If you do not identify in the gender binary the FDA pretty much also gives you the middle finger according to the Red Cross. 

Majority of the history textbooks in today's K-12 schools come from Texas. We know that Texas is in the south and the south tends to be all pro confederate. A lot of text books in K-12 public schools cater to White, Cisgender, Heterosexual Men. In Kindergarten you learn that the Native Americans and the Pilgrims all loved each other and played Ring Around the Rosie when really the Pilgrims brought diseases, committed murder, and stole the land from the Natives. In high schools they are more focused about teaching what is based on a Standardized test rather than teaching that Christopher Columbus didn’t discover shit and did not know how to use a god damn map because the jag off got lost. The man did not even land in the U.S. Even my late grandfather who taught High School English knew that. Also do not get me started when it comes to history lessons about the Civil War. 

I did not learn the truth until I got into college. I also read literature from authors during and after the civil war era that were banned from high school curriculum that honestly should be read in high school. I had to take a class in college called Literature During and After  the Civil to learn that a lot of the the K-12 curriculum is catered to white people. In High School the only thing I learned about the Holocaust was about political propaganda. We would only focus one day about the actual Holocaust and it was never on the tests we took. Instead what was on the test was Pearl Harbor, Internment Camps in the US and Propaganda. We did not even discuss that Adolf Hitler killed 6 million Jews and 11 million other people persecuted by the Nazi Germany during the holocaust. 

The thing is Bill Maher is just another one of those Baby Boomers whose mind is stuck in the past where bigotry towards minority groups was acceptable, back when you if you broke the  heteronormativity in society  you could have gotten jail time, back when LGBTQ+ people could not be themselves. Back when magazines said a woman’s place was in the kitchen and to be a homemaker. Back when almost everyone was against marriage equality. Back when Vaccines were being blamed for Autism. Bill Maher not taking accountability for his actions and blaming the “PC Police” and overall “Political Correctness” is what he gets wrong on his show. 

[donnaintx]

1. I do not make my bed expect when I change the sheets. What’s the point if I’m going to take frequent naps everyday. I can only sleep for 3 hours at a time for one reason or another.🤷🏻‍♀️ it sucks getting old.😂

2. My favorite number is 13. I know. I’m odd.😂

3. My job is wife, mother to six children and grandmother to soon to be 16 grandchildren in October.

4. Go back to school? My whole life has been a school classroom of learning. Isn’t that what reading is for…to learn?

5. I can parallel park and drive a standard shifting vehicle including a nine passenger van with no power steering or power brakes.

6. A job that I had that would surprise people? Paid or unpaid job? Paid-Group Ticket Sales at a big amusement park that is not Disney plus Data Entry there too. Unpaid jobs were Choir Director, Librarian, Adult Leader at Girls Camp to name just a few.

7. Are Aliens real? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Aren’t we all aliens in some way?😂

8. See question number 5.

9. My guilty pleasure is great food and Tumblr.

10. Tattoos? I have permanent eyeliner and eyebrows which are tattooed on. I never got around to having my lips done. It does save time now that I am older.

11. Favorite color(s) in order of preference are blue, rose pink, and coral/pinky peach.

12. Things that people do that drive me crazy? With family it’s LOTS of things. They know the buttons to push especially Hubs. Probably not putting things back in their place at home in my kitchen. I don’t freak out much in the rest of the house but I do draw the line at wet items being thrown in random places like on the floor or furniture that are not the bathroom, kitchen or laundry rooms. Those rooms have tile floors, waterproof counters and furniture that can have water left on it without much damage done. Though water on the floor will cause me or others to slip and fall, getting injured. If it’s a small puddle of water on the floor I’m gonna think that the dog did it.😂

13. Phobias? I’m Claustrophobic and I can’t stand snakes. I live in Texas. Water Moccasins are real, along with other poisonous snakes. 

14. Favorite childhood sport? I was on a volleyball team in 5th and 6th grades in elementary school. We had district tournaments which were really fun. In Physical Education in Junior High School which was 7th, 8th and 9th grades I played volleyball too. We did not have district tournaments which made me a little bit sad.🤷🏻‍♀️

15. Yes, “I talk to myself and we laugh and laugh.”🤣🤣🤣 I saw a shirt with that saying on it.

16. What movie do I adore? Lots of them but “Somewhere in Time” is my top favorite and I bought the book that it was based on called “Bid Time Return.” I find watching the movie first is better than reading the book first that way I’m not disappointed when things that I thought were great are deleted. It’s like “OH, there’s more wonderful stuff in this book to enjoy.”

17. Puzzles are fun!

18. Favorite Music? Almost anything besides “Rap Crap” as my hubs calls it. I’m not talking about people like Will Smith type of rapping. I like classic rock like Dean Winchester and classic symphony or the greats like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and everything in between like Sam Winchester of Supernatural. I love music and I love singing. I can read music because I took years of piano lessons.

19. I do not like coffee or tea unless it’s an herbal tea with no black tea, green tea or white tea in it which I think are from the same plant.🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m could be wrong. I prefer juice, Dr. Pepper, milk, water. I’ve always referred to Dr. Pepper as my strong or stiff drink.

20. The first thing that I wanted to be when I grew up? A Wife and Mother to which I have accomplished. (I’m a baby boomer) And to travel across the USA and other countries which I have done too. I went on a month long big family vacation with my hub’s family driving from Texas to Nicaragua after we had been married only five days, I’ve been on a family vacation in Europe with my children and three oldest grandchildren who were toddlers at the time, been to Canada with my family, I’ve been to Madrid, Spain for 2 weeks with my hubs which I enjoyed doing.

2020 20 fact game

1. Do you make your bed? almost never… unless I wanna impress my hubs for sex

2. What is your favorite number? 8

3. What’s your job? Stay at home mom, for now.

4. If you could, would you go back to school?  I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.  I want to get my license, but have had delusions about getting my PHD, then I could be Dr. Myin.  Anyone have a kink?

5. Can you parallel park?  YES!  And its not even a requirement on the driver test in my state.

6. A job you had that would surprise people?  bartender?

7. Do you think aliens are real? no 

8. Can you drive a standard car? YES!!! In fact. this is the first car that I have owned that isn’t a standard.

9. What’s your guilty pleasure?  writing porn here…

10. Tattoos? None

11. Favorite Color? purple

12. Things people do that drive you crazy?  singing the wrong words to songs on purpose

13. Any phobias? SPIDERS!!!!  

14. Favorite Childhood Sport? Volleyball

15. Do you talk to yourself? Constantly.

16. What movie do you adore? (A lot)  Cabin in the Woods.

17. Do you like doing puzzles?  yea, until my neck is sore

18. Favorite kind of music?  Classic Rock 

19. Tea or coffee? Tea. Fuck Coffee

20. The first thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up? a doctor (of medicine)

[nashvillesingersblog]

Ken Hatton shares his insight about performing with the Bluegrass Student Union, the Louisville Thoroughbreds, his experience as a director, solo performer, and arranger, and his very candid opinions about the evolution of the music industry and the Barbershop Harmony Society.

Top photo: Ken Hatton

Bottom photo: Bluegrass Student Union 1978 International Quartet Champion of the SPEBSQSA (DBA Barbershop Harmony Society) (L to R) Ken Hatton, Allen Hatton, Dan Burgess, Rick Staab

Todd Wilson had a chance to interview Ken Hatton for our email newsletter. Todd is one of our founders and serves the Nashville Singers as Executive Director and Artistic Director.    

You can subscribe to our newsletter by texting the word SINGERS to 42828

DISCLAIMER: Some of our readers may find Ken’s responses to a few of Todd’s questions a bit edgy. Due to the length of this interview, only a small portion was published in the Nashville Singers newsletter. Hatton’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Nashville Singers organization.

TW: When did you know you wanted to be a singer?  

KH: It’s impossible to remember not being a singer.  Granddaddy and Dad were both “song-leaders” in the Church of Christ (“Minister of Music” was considered too “uppity”), and Dad joined the Louisville #1 Chapter of SPEBSQSA, Inc. as a tenor with his high school gospel quartet, in 1951.  Mom was a fair pianist and could hold a tune pretty well too.  Brother Allen was born in 1954, and I came along in 1955.  

The Church of Christ held that instrumental accompaniment was a sin when making a “joyful noise,” so all the worshippers sang in 4-part harmony, you know, just like that original quartet, “Matthew-Mark-Luke-and-John.”  It was all we knew as toddlers, so I can’t really recall when I learned to sing harmony.  It just always was.  Dad taught us to use our “musical ear” to find the harmony, using the shape-notes in the hymnal.  His advice was, “When the note moves up, sing higher, and when the note moves down, sing lower, until it sounds good with the melody-note.”  That was how we learned to woodshed; it was a spiritual thing.  

I do remember at the age of five, when I learned my first popular song.  Allen was in the first grade, and I would wait for his school bus every day on the front steps. I really missed my playmate!  Each afternoon, he would teach me all the things he had learned that day in school.  On one of those afternoons, he sang me a song that some of his fellow first graders had heard on the radio.  Within a few minutes, we were singing it in unison, and with some occasional improvised harmony.  “When I was a little bitty baby, my mama would rock me in my cradle, in them ol’ cotton fields back home.”  I’m not sure that’s when I knew I wanted to be a singer, but that’s when I realized that I was one.  

TW: What can you tell us about growing up in the Hatton family?  

KH: We were encouraged to participate in music-programs in school by our parents, and we enjoyed those activities.  Perhaps talent at a given discipline affects one’s motivation (For some reason, I did not really dig long division or algebra).  Allen learned to play the trumpet, and both of us took piano-lessons as youngsters.  Later, our younger sisters displayed similar talents for singing, and the oldest of the three, Jo Anne, played piano.  Dad was one of the original Thoroughbreds, when the chorus was formed out of the old Louisville Chapter, and Mom sang with the Kentuckiana Chapter of Sweet Adelines, Inc. (later, Sweet Adelines International).  Both parents dabbled in quartet-singing from time to time, and their ensembles always sounded musical, but never seemed to stay together long enough to earn rank in competition.

Dad took Allen and me to an occasional chorus show, where we would be seated in the audience and admonished not to move.  Then, we would watch the chorus rehearse for their performance, and would enjoy the show. I can recall getting an unexplainable lump in my throat whenever that chorus of men would sing with reckless abandon. The highlights of those shows were the several chapter-quartets, including the Derbytowners and (later) the Citations, both of whom were really good competing quartets.  We didn’t realize that the goose-bumps and throat-lumps were being caused by the ringing of chords.  The big thrill for us, as kids, was to experience the Club House Four. They were a pretty good singing District Champ quartet, but those guys really worked at entertaining.  Their jokes and routines were not as “edgy” as the Brian Lynches of the world might prefer, but old folks and kids alike just couldn’t stop laughing whenever the “Club House” was on stage.  

The Thoroughbreds’ Musical Director was a guy named Bill Benner, who had moved to Louisville for work, after having directed the Lake Washington Skippers to a second place finish in international competition in 1957.  Over a four year period, he took the brand new Thoroughbred Chorus to 8th, 6th, 2nd and 1st place finishes, winning their first chorus championship in 1962.  Soon after that competition, Bill resigned as director, though he still conducted the Sweet Ads for a while.  It seems he had been so focused on barbershop that he had ignored his wife and his job, and they both sort of fired him.  He needed to get paid for directing the chorus, and the 1962 T-breds didn’t like that very much.  So, our family took him, in, and Dad provided him with a job at his real estate company.

The saddest part was that Bill was being considered for the Society’s Music Services Director position. The Thoroughbreds’ 42 singers had finished second in 1961 to the 160 voice Chorus of the Chesapeake, under the direction of Bob Johnson.  It was revealed later that year that a certain judge was a member of the winning chorus, and he had over-scored the winners and underscored the ‘Breds.  The judge was kicked out of the judging program, and the Thoroughbreds received a secret apology, which was delivered in person by the new Music Services Director – Bob Johnson!  It probably was a good thing, as Bill’s tunnel vision personality might not have been a good match for that position.    

Bill proved not to be much of an agent, but he sure was fun to have around the house!  While he was thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life, and eating Mom’s home-cooked meals every night, Bill would teach us tags.  The guy was a savant, carrying all four parts in his head, and could teach the whole song by rote – eight bars at a time, with no “spots (That’s what we called sheet music back then).”  In fact, that’s the way Bill had had taught most of the charts to the Thoroughbreds for four years – by rote.  

So, Allen and I had one of the Society’s premiere musical smart-guys in the bedroom next to ours, and we got quite an education during his year and a half long visit.  It turned out that we were pretty quick studies, which was a good match for a bipolar type, like Bill.  There were five us in the house at that time who could hold our parts, and it was fairly easy to sing one of Bill’s tags after very little teaching time.  The first one we learned was “I Found in My Mother’s Eyes.”  

Bill moved to Chicago, and none of us ever heard from him again.  Jim Miller and Joe Wise had been appointed co-directors, and with the help of coach/arranger Ed Gentry, ushered in a new era of barbershop chorus singing through the Thoroughbreds.  Meanwhile, Mom took Bill’s place as Musical Director of the Kentuckiana Chapter of Sweet Adelines, Inc., later directing Falls of the Ohio Chapter, Derby City Chorus and Song of Atlanta.  She served as a judge in SAI contests, and sang a pretty mean baritone.      

Most choruses had a rule back then that excluded men under the age of 16. The exception was that one could join at 15, if your dad was an active member.  The thinking was that the members looked forward to their night out with the men (not with the women or the children).  They didn’t watch their language, and if they felt like having a beer or a smoke, they didn’t have to worry about being a role-model for just that one night each week. Boy, I miss those days!

Allen and I both joined at 15, and sang in our first Chorus Contest in Atlanta, in 1972, in which the chorus placed third.  We were disappointed, as the Thoroughbreds had won the championship without our help in 1962, 1966 and 1969, and were tied with Pekin, IL for the most international wins. Allen headed off to Morehead State, and back home, Rick Staab, Danny Burgess and I got our feet wet, singing with an “old” Thoroughbred named Paul Morris on tenor.  Paul was 28.  We sang together for about six months.  Rick went away to attend Georgetown University, breaking up the group, and Allen came home to attend University of Louisville.  Then, Rick surprised everybody, and came home to attend U of L as well.  That’s when the final combination of the Bluegrass Student Union was formed, with Allen on tenor.  Now, we had four guys about the same age, with similar skills and education.  

Mom (Mary Jo Hatton) was our first coach, and refused to let us work on craft, focusing instead on singing with the right muscles.  She knew we wouldn’t go back and do that grunt-work after we had earned the “cheap” points.  Mom was concerned about us damaging our young voices, so she demanded that we master vocal production first – a smart move.  

TW: What got you interested in barbershop harmony?

KH: One could say, “See Question #2,” and just stop there, but there is a twist.  As a young teenager during the hippie-years, barbershop was associated with the establishment, and we young people had our own subculture. We were told not to trust anyone over 30, and pop music was progressing in a different direction from Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook.  I perceived barbershop in those days as a fun hobby for older fellows, but the quartets and choruses I had heard didn’t seem like a good fit for the musical trends I was following as a baby-boomer.

Allen and I attended our first International Convention on our parents’ coattails in 1964.  Later, we attended our second one in 1968 (I was twelve), and discovered that barbershoppers had lots of pretty daughters in the “Barberteens” room, but didn’t appear to have very many sons. That turned out to be handy for us. We enjoyed attending those conventions, and sang some tags, but didn’t really pay much attention to the musical goings-on – too many distractions.    

Fortunately, Mom and Dad had a library of recordings of the Society’s Top Ten quartets, as well as recordings of live shows and Long Play (LP) record-albums produced by top quartets like the Renegades, Roaring Twenties, Boston Common, Dealers Choice, Regents, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Sundowners, Sidewinders, etc..  We listened to them all, and enjoyed some more than once.  But far and away, the quartet whose records I fell in love with were produced by the Sun Tones (later the “Suntones”).  My headphones and I spent hundreds of hours poring over their fantastic renditions of popular songs set to barbershop, and that music convinced me that this particular a cappella style could actually be “cool.”  Later, I would wait by the mailbox for each new Suntones-record, as it was released.  I listened until I had accidentally memorized all four parts to all of the several “Sunspots” records that we had.  That was the final piece of the puzzle.  I then joined the chorus, because I simply had to.

TW: You were a member of the Thoroughbreds, considered one of the most successful barbershop choruses in history.  Can you share a few of your own experiences with the T-breds?

KH: Like you guys, I could write a book.  Most of my experiences would be similar to those of other long time barbershoppers, and if I started telling about funny things that happened, we would never be able to list them all.  I will mention one general happening that helped create my personal mission and philosophy.  

Our 120 man chorus showed its best face during competitions, but after winning each trophy, about half of the guys would take a “break” for a couple of years.  We would be left with 60-70 active singers, who did the business of the chorus, week in and week out.  That core of “lifers” sold the tickets and program-ads, built the scenery, commissioned and tweaked the arrangements, rehearsed the show-tunes and performed the package-shows. The rest of the guys came back only to compete.

To our director, Jim Miller, it didn’t matter how small the audience was, or whether it was a prestigious event.  He spent the same energy in preparation and performance, whether we were singing for a banquet of 75 people or a stadium of 10,000.  I can recall many tough shows for small audiences who were not expecting the entertainment to be some barbershop group.  Jim would plan the show carefully, knowing that we would have to work hard and smart, in order to please the “tough” crowd.  Then, he would rehearse us for a couple of hours before the performance, to see which key people were missing, and would change his plan accordingly, moving certain singers to different voice parts to achieve balance, and substituting some second string MCs, soloists and quartet-singers.  

After a complete run-through, the chorus would hit the stage, and Jim would let the audience know with his body language and apparent effort that we wanted to please them. He would work up a sweat, and motivate us to dig in, so as to deliver the most emotional and exciting performance we could muster.  We always exceeded the expectations of those tougher (smaller) audiences, and each performance made the event seem more important to them and to us than it really was.  

BSU followed Jim’s example in that regard, and, with few exceptions, we exceeded the expectations too. For three decades, our quartet did a complete run-through before every performance.  We found that our percentage of remembered lyrics and accurate intervals went up, while our number of seconds of dead time went down.

Music Educators generally teach singers to perform without showing any apparent effort, but that was exactly the opposite of our approach.  We always wanted the audience to sense how hard we were working for them, so we made sure that all of our effort was apparent.  That made our audiences feel special, which is supposed to be “the job,” isn’t it?  Jim’s and our approach was one of the things that set our chorus and quartet apart from most others, who tried to hide their effort during performances, for some unknown “sophisticated” reason.  

One exception?  We sang for a United Nations General Assembly dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in the early 1980s, and we gave ‘em our best stuff, performing with reckless abandon.  We never got more than a white gloved golf-clap from those diplomats. Our host explained that they had all been taught to be very reserved, when in the presence of each other.  But our job was to make them forget their emotional training, so we failed that day. There were no whistles, shouting, hats in the air, money or room-keys on the stage, and no tears or laughter from anybody.  It was miserable.  Later, at the reception, the audience-members were quick with the compliments flattery, but I just wanted to crawl under a rock.

The rest of the 33 years of shows pretty much run together in my mind, because they were the same in this regard:  We gave everything we had in preparation and performance, and fell across the goal line each time, totally spent and exhausted… victorious!  Looking back, our experience was a lot more fulfilling than if we had taken some drugs, skipped across the stage, and tried to hide our efforts from the crowd.  Thanks, Jim!

TW: What were the names of some of the quartets and quartet-singers you sang with before the Bluegrass Student Union?  Compared to those quartets, what was different about the BSU?

KH: BSU was the first organized quartet of which I was a member.  Years later, I sang in several other quartets; Kids at Heart, The Sensations, The Exchange, Four for the Price, Bold Venture and The Daddy-Ohs!  One difference with BSU was trust.  Since I knew that the other parts would always be where they were supposed to be, I was free to think about the message of the song and our emotional connection with the audience, instead of being preoccupied with a few synchronization errors, out of tune chords or horizontal tuning (song going sharp).  The other main difference was the fact that BSU was all business.  When the last man arrived at rehearsal or at the studio, we started singing, and we didn’t quit until the first guy had to leave. On the road, we didn’t sight-see or attend a lot of parties.  We discussed future plans on the plane or in the car, had our carb-dinner together, rehearsed at the hotel, went to the venue early, set up our recordings in the lobby, dressed and made up, did our complete run-through, and gave our performance. Then, we repeated the process before the afterglow.  We often listened to the show tape on the way home, and discussed improvements for the next show.  Every action was designed to maximize the quality of performance.  In some of those other quartets, we spent a little time more enjoying ourselves, and that was fun, too, but in a different way.

TW: What can you tell us about a few of your most memorable BSU performances?  

KH: There was a sameness about our performances over the years that makes them all kind of a blur.  The common denominator was the audience-reaction. We started with a short, fast, high pitched opener, designed to get the audience’s attention away from whatever had preceded us on the show. We followed with self-deprecating humor, to make them like us personally. Then, we sang a swing-tune to charm, and followed with a sincere love-ballad, for the “kill.”  After that, we could sing our novelty songs, to demonstrate virtuosity, and repeat the process ad infinitum.  We were never really a one-song standing ovation kind of quartet. Our approach was a selling process, designed to earn the audience’s respect and love over the course of the performance.  Typically, the long or standing ovation would come at the end, as designed, and only then would we agree to perform an encore. Incidentally, you never saw BSU take cups or bottles of water on the stage. What’s up with that?  Do beta-blockers dry you out?    

Of course, we saw our share of far-away places and prestigious venues, but prestige and exoticness were not what made a performance memorable. Again, it was the audience.  One that stands out was in Viborg, South Dakota.  This community had one hotel, made of unpainted concrete blocks. There was no phone in the room, and a black and white TV was advertised at 50 cents extra per day.  The venue was a high school gymnasium, and our expectations were low.  Nevertheless, we prepared according to our training, and when we hit the stage, we realized there was standing room only in the place; people were hanging from the light fixtures to get a chance to see this show.  We didn’t know that South Dakotans rarely got to see any kind of live entertainment.  People had driven to Viborg from several hundred miles around.  It was such an appreciative crowd, and we were able to deliver a solid performance because we had not taken them for granted.  Carnegie Hall was nice, but this crowd was deafening!

We were invited to sing on the Saturday evening show at the Buckeye Invitational, in Columbus, Ohio, 30 years after our first performance.  It was to be our second appearance at the Buckeye, which was rare, so we were excited about the opportunity, late in our long career.  

We decided to dress and make up in our hotel rooms, and arrived during intermission, knowing that there would be a feature quartet before our spot as the headliner, which was traditionally the final act.  The stage manager excitedly welcomed us into a dressing room, expressing surprise that we were so late, and advising that we were scheduled to open the second half of the show.  I apologized, and asked, “Who is headlining?”  “Max Q,” he replied (who at that time was a silver medalist).  

Barbershop-etiquette calls for the International Champion to headline the show, which should have been us. It was (and is) a slap in the face for any champion to play second fiddle to a second place quartet.  Of course, it was possible that the show producers were neophyte barbershoppers who didn’t know any better.  However, there is no way that Max Q would not have known that tradition.  They should have declined immediately, when asked to headline, but evidently, they had decided it was appropriate for them to be the stars of the show, for some reason that was more important than good manners.  

We decided that the only thing to do was to remain quiet about their offense, and to simply do our “talking” with our performance, as we had been trained to do.  We spent a few minutes in the dressing room, rearranged our song-order and palaver for maximum effect, and went through the curtain with big ol’ grins, about half pissed off.  We opened with “Back in Business,” and the crowd went wild.  We just banged every song, and there was nothing left for Max Q, but a pile of juice.  In the lobby after the show, our recording table was mobbed, and theirs had four lonely guys in tuxedos holding pens, with a couple of crickets chirping, and no autographs to sign.  Second again!

As we were packing up, Jeff Oxley ambled over, and said sheepishly, “I guess you guys probably should have headlined this show.”  Ya think? Yeah, that one was memorable.  We never told anybody about it, until this writing.  

In the 80s, we did some research by surveying the various chapters.  There were over 800, and about 600 of them held an annual show, with a guest quartet.  If you took out the holiday weekends, on a given Saturday night, there were 15 annual chapter-shows going on in the country.  All of the show-chairmen wanted a champion, a past-champion or a top ten quartet as their headliner.  As one of the most popular show-quartets, we had our choice, so we conducted a survey, and began to be selective about which bids we would accept.  Our goal was to maximize fun and profit.  We started to perform only where the chapter had a larger crowd (good for recording sales) and a reputation of hospitality where other guest quartets were concerned (good for the fun).

We pitched in with the Citations, the Harrington Brothers and eventually the Suntones, to organize three special weekends.  We approached chapters about sponsoring special shows that would feature BSU and each one of those other quartets, with only quartet-singing – no choruses.  The idea went viral, and the three weekends were spectacular - so much fun!  The last one was in 1991, with the Suntones.  We performed on a Friday night, two shows on Saturday and one on Sunday afternoon in the southern Michigan and northern Ohio areas.  What a kick to ride around for the weekend with our idols, and get to know them personally!  We included a set as an octet, since we knew all of their tunes, and we traded two of our guys for two of their guys at the afterglows.  It was a dream come true, and BONUS – we all became good friends.

TW: What BSU CD recording project generated the biggest sense of pride, and what about that project was different?  

KH: We were proud of all of our recordings, because we took great care in the production of each one. From a young age, we knew that our quartet was finite, and hoped that people would listen to our recordings, long after we were gone.  That thought was on our minds with the planning and execution of each project. Bobby Ernspiker was our recording engineer, and he was also the son of a Thoroughbred.  

On the first two albums, “After Class” and “The Older the Better,” we had a largely technical approach, caring more about the accuracy of the notes, the ringing of the chords and the intelligibility of the lyrics than about the art.  We were making pretty good bucks on the road, so we decided to give Bob unlimited control over the duration of sessions.  Bob was our fifth set of ears, and was instrumental in capturing the best performances we could muster. Unlike other quartets, we spent six months to a year in weekly recording sessions, to do our best work.  It was our perception that those albums were not perfect, but they were better than most others.  We made money, although our sales were not yet commensurate with the expense and effort we had invested.  

Having met Walter Latzko, we decided to do our first theme album, which would be the first one created by any barbershop quartet.  We chose Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” as the theme, and set to work on Walter’s fantastic arrangements.  We spent more time listening to Bobby’s guidance in the studio about emotional performance. It took a year to take the tunes from the paper to the stage, and another year to record them.  This time, we spared no expense on the studio time, the costuming, choreography, graphic art and photography, in an attempt to create the best show-package and recording in the history of the Society. The result was an artistic success, but again, the sales were no better than those of any ol’ past champion.

In spite of the apparent unwillingness of the buying public to notice any difference, we were pleased with the product, and decided to look for another theme.  We eventually settled on the songs of the 40s, and the idea for our “Jukebox Saturday Night” album was born.  Latzko and Waesche, our two faves, collaborated on the charts, and we applied the same attention to detail (and spent the same moneys), to create the best product possible.  We accelerated our attention to capturing the right mood for each song.  When that recording hit the streets, the sales went through the roof.  It was puzzling; perhaps the barbershoppers were tired of the Music Man theme, but excited about hearing tunes adapted to barbershop that they had not heard before. For whatever reason, this particular theme appealed to them, and Jukebox catapulted us to a new level of acclaim that left the other past champs behind.  The perception was that we were progressing, improving and pushing the edge of the envelope musically, just as our great examples, the Suntones and the Buffalo Bills, had done twenty and thirty years before.  

We continued that approach with a collection of tunes written by George Gershwin, whose chords and progressions had earned his songs taboo-status in previous Society competitions. But we liked them, and so did Walter (Latzko) and Ed (Waesche).  The result was our album, “Here to Stay,” the first one we did not release as an LP record, but only as a CD and a cassette.  The songs were more sophisticated, the arrangements were arguably better, and the performances were emotional.  The singing demonstrated greater savvy, while our technical execution was just a hair less precise than that of the previous two recordings.  The perception was that this was a lateral move, kind of an extension of Jukebox, and the sales were just as strong as those of the previous album.

In 1998, we introduced “LEGACY,” a 25 year collection of audio recordings in a 3-CD box set, including all five studio-albums, several previously unreleased tracks and a recording of a live show, complete with declamatory stuff between songs.  In 2006, we created our final recording product, called “COMMENCEMENT,” a 2-disc set (1 CD and 1 DVD).  The audio disc includes a few tracks that we were messing around with when we decided to retire for good.  The video disc includes the best performance of each song that we could find on video tapes we had collected over the years.  

Fans of “Here to Stay” and “Jukebox” have since gone back and checked out “Music Man,” and found it to have been under appreciated by past generations. We understand that our video of the Music Man show-package has been used by teachers at Harmony University for decades, to demonstrate showmanship, the way to put a show together, avoidance of dead time and the use of costumes, props, lighting, effective pauses and voice-over-music, to enhance a quartet’s performance.  That pleases us very much.  All of our tracks are available perpetually and digitally through iTunes, CDbaby.com and Pandora.  We have discontinued production of all hard copy CDs, etc.    

We are certainly proud of all of the products, since those five (original) releases each represented our best work at a certain stage in our development.  By design, many of the songs in the second half our career had a timeless appeal that continues to pay dividends.  Thanks to some good taste in song selection, great arrangers, hard work, outside-the-box engineering and professional artwork, our collections of recordings are still being purchased and listened to today.  We anticipate that people will enjoy our music a century or two after we start keeping each other company at the ol’ marble orchard.

TW: The Nashville Singers had a chance to sing your arrangement of “Manly Men” a few years ago, and the audience loved it!  When did you complete your first vocal arrangement?  Do you remember the name of the song?

KH: Glad you liked that one, but sorry, I really don’t remember the first one. When BSU started, I was not adequately educated to sight-read. That skill was developed slowly, and by necessity, over the years.  BSU was a hybrid quartet – that is to say, we were products of the woodshedding generations of the 40s, 50s and 60s, but were also affected by the work of genius-arrangers of the 70s and 80s.  As a result, we did not trust some aspects of the written arrangement, and always reserved the right to woodshed our own changes. Sometimes, they were necessary, to facilitate breath-points and “covers” of pickups.  Other times, they were swipes that we heard and felt, as we learned the chart. Helping to create the tune was a big part of the fun that we simply refused to give up.  

Most arrangers think it is presumptuous of others to change anything about their work.  That attitude is hypocritical and presumptuous in itself, since an arrangement, by definition, is composed of changes from the songwriter’s original work, who is the real (and legal) artist in question, anyway.  As we experienced different arrangers, we figured out which ones had a problem with our changes, and we quietly declined any and all opportunities to sing their charts. Ed Waesche was the first to exhibit an appreciation for what he called our “musical sensibilities,” and endorsed our changes, unless we committed a form-error, which he would help us to correct. Later, Walter Latzko encouraged those same sensibilities, so we had two of the smartest geniuses in our corner, which was more than anybody else had.  Those who wanted to dictate every aspect of the way we sang a song could go find their own quartet.  This one was ours!

The woodshedding accelerated my learning process, and over the years, I learned to spell some of the chords, identify intervals, tell a major key from a relative minor key, make up simple key-changes, etc.  Before long, I could sight-read all four parts, and would know them cold before we had our first rehearsal on a given song.  

It wasn’t until 2002 that I bought my first Finale software.  Friend Walter, had suffered a stroke several years prior, but was still writing arrangements daily, using his left hand to operate the mouse of a computer. The Finale system would enable me to be of assistance to him.

In his salad days, Walter could write an arrangement with his lead pencil and some blank staff-paper while on an airline flight that lasted a couple of hours. He could see the notes on the page in his head, could hear the tune being sung (also in his head), and he could write it down as fast as you or I could write a letter to Mom.  That was his genius, and it explains why only a handful of our Society members were respected arrangers in those days.  In no case did it take Walter longer than a few hours to hand write an arrangement of a single song.  

However, the stroke had robbed him of the use of his strong writing hand and of some of his energy. On the computer, it then took Walter about twelve hours to write an arrangement.  It became a two day job, so he would sometimes tire of the piece before he finished, and would send it to me for ideas from my old “musical sensibilities.”  We collaborated on a lot of charts during the last years of his life, and he taught me a lot about arranging.  

Lacking formal musical education, I am certainly no match for the geniuses who have that special (in their head) kind of talent.  However, with the aid of the Finale program, I found that I was competent to write a chart that included some original ideas.  With the computer, I could listen to my work through speakers, instead of “in my head,” and, with effort, could tweak the chart until it met my own standards as a top quartet singer.  

It was a labor of love, and I was mentored by a guy whom I loved.  I found that, even as my performing ability began to slow down, my strong imagination produced the same endorphin-rush, while writing, that I had enjoyed as a performer.  Over the past 14 years, I have compiled a modest library of 60 or 70 charts. However, I was not the only one who discovered that Finale can take the place of those certain genius-skills. There are now more competent arrangers than there used to be, all competing for the attention of the top ten quartets and choruses.  Of course, there only ten of them, right?  So, my catalogue has been placed with friend Jay Giallombardo and his wife Helen, in the hope that some hot shot quartets might notice them.  Some of those charts are listed on Jay’s web site, but I am not writing much these days.  

Some favorite arrangements that I wrote include a medley of songs from “Paint Your Wagon,” a millennial song popularized by “Five for Fighting” called “100 Years,” and a five part solo (with barbershop chorus background) called “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town.”  My favorite collaboration with Walter is a contest-chart of a song written by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells, called “County Fair” for an obscure Disney film called “So Dear to My Heart.” We finished that one shortly before my old friend passed away.  All of those tunes have matching learning tracks, which should be available from Jay.  You can hear full mixes of several of them on my album, “Walter and Me,” available on iTunes and CDbaby.com.  Thanks for the commercial.

TW:  From 2004 to 2011, you released four recordings as a soloist. What/who inspired you down that path? How would folks purchase some of those products?

KH: In January of 2002, the phone rang, interrupting a BSU rehearsal on a Sunday evening at Thoroughbred Hall.  A tiny voice said, “You don’t know me, but my name is Chilton Price, and I’ve written a song to honor the fallen firefighters from the 911 disaster.  We would like for the Thoroughbreds to sing it.”

Usually, such a phone call resulted in an embarrassing experience, because I would have to tell the person that they had written a bad song.  This time, such was not the case.  Ms. Price faxed me her song, and on Monday, I sent it to Walter, who wrote a chart that same day.  That evening, I passed it out to the chorus, and we learned in the same night.  Two weeks later, we performed it for a thousand attendees of a convention of the National Association of Retired Military Officers and their bejeweled significant others, at the Grand Ballroom of the Galt House Hotel, in downtown Louisville.  The place came apart.  

I visited Ms. Price the following Tuesday evening, to present her with a recording of that performance, and to thank her for thinking of us.  She said,” Ken, I didn’t tell you who I really was, because I wanted you to judge my song by its own merits.  I have several gold records hanging on the wall in my hallway.  I wrote ‘You Belong to Me’ and other hits from the 1950s. They stopped recording my music when Elvis came along, because I refused to change my writing style.  But I have continued to write new songs that sound just like the Great American Songbook tunes for the last 50 years.  No one with talent has ever heard them before.  Would you be willing to listen to some?”  

Chilton played, and I sang. I felt as if I had won the lottery. The first song made me cry, and each one was better than the last one.  This was the start of a beautiful friendship that lasted 400 Tuesday nights over an eight year period, until her death at the age of 96.  We catalogued her music, and wrote verses and extra lyrics together.  We collaborated on new original songs.  And we talked about every aspect of our lives, keeping no secrets.  You guys should know by now that when you make music together, it is one of the most intimate things you can do with another person. When writing together, we had to communicate the same feeling to the listener, so we had to compare our feelings and life-experiences, in order to tell the same story.  It really was one of the thrills of my life, to become friends with an accomplished songwriter, and Chilton, in particular, was a genuine person, with great wisdom and class.  She taught me how to write songs.  

Along the way, Chilton expressed her desire to have other artists sample her work.  We were already familiar with the freshly budding careers of Michael Bublé and Josh Groban, so she was inspired to hire a pianist and record a demo-CD of original songs, with me doing the singing.  We called it “Pure Price.”  The project turned out well, but we were advised that new songs presented by a new singer was a tough sell.  So, we went back to the studio, and recorded a CD with half original songs and half familiar songs, called “The Best Is Yet to Come.”  Then, we were advised that, while piano-vocal was charming, the tunes really deserved more accompaniment.  So, we went back a third time, and recorded yet another CD of half familiar and half original songs, but this time with a full 17 piece big band and a dozen string-players. The original band-charts were written by our favorite pianist, Jay Flippin, who also put together the best musicians in Louisville for the project.  Man, this was a dream come true!  To be the Sinatra-guy, with a studio full of hot players and the actual songwriter, smiling behind the glass.  It really was heaven.  We got to meet with Michael Feinstein for an afternoon, but so far, none of Chilton’s and my unpublished works have been recorded by anyone famous.    

By that time, BSU had slowed down, and in December of 2006, we called it quits for good.  Another singer who was working at the studio had a steady gig, fronting a big band on the Cunard cruise-ship “Queen Elizabeth II,” and needed some relief, so he could spend more time with his family. So, he got me set up to take his place on several trips for 35 days at a time over the next two years (2007-2008). That was a real learning experience. I was surprised to learn that those musicians do not rehearse.  They don’t need the practice, because they can sight-read it the first time, and make it sound like some guy on the radio.  The only question was, could I keep up with them?

We had several thousand passengers on the ship, and several hundred of them came on board strictly for the ballroom dancing in the ship’s famous Queen’s Room, which was designed and furnished in the style of the Titanic, from the original White Star Line. It was a classy joint, full of rich folks from several continents, who were very sensitive to the tempo required for each different kind of dance.  We performed two one hour sets each evening, seven days a week, and we were not to repeat a song during any certain cruise, some of which lasted for more than two weeks. I had the opportunity to perform several hundred different songs, and I had a whole four measures to figure out the key, tempo, meter and rhythm of each one, before coming in on time and in tune.

The international montage of musicians was mostly fresh out of college, using their talents to work their way around the world, before settling down with a job and family. These guys were all pretty jaded, and showed it with their playing.  Everybody was in business for himself, and not enjoying the room, the crowd or even each other.  It became apparent that they had been taught by their university professors to look down their noses at the listeners and at other musicians who could not play as well. We had a trombone player who was a great sight-reader, but who was not an experienced improviser.  They would “throw him the ball,” and then laugh hysterically (in full view of the audience) at his feeble attempts to play a trombone-solo.  

I dressed them down pretty good during the next break.  I let them know that this was unprofessional behavior, and I expected them to get a haircut, be sober, stop showing up with spotted ties and wrinkled clothes, and to act like pros, instead of amateurs.  They could set me off the boat in Tahiti, and I could fly home – no problem, and they could explain the absence of the singer for the rest of the month.  Then, I began to recognize horn players from the stage whenever one would distinguish himself with a solo.  I gave them nicknames, like “Mr. Incredible (Ukrainian)” and “Lady-Killer (Canadian).” Before long, those guys were smiling at each other, calling out the measure-numbers and enjoying playing as an ensemble.  We didn’t feature the trombone player anymore.            

It was a little nerve-wracking at the start, but after three or four days, I was comfortable enough to look up from the music-stand and perform.  After another few days, the music-director in charge of all the acts asked me to handle the speaking between songs.  At the end of our first 17 day cruise, the passenger-evaluations gave us a score of 85 out of 100, which turned out to be the highest score ever awarded to that particular room.  The musicians and the bosses were pretty doggone happy, and the band-director got a raise.  All that resulted from a barbershopper – an amateur with a professional attitude – being thrown in with a bunch of professional musicians with bush-league attitudes.  I found out from the band-cats that singing in tune on that ship made me an anomaly, which helped.  

We made some good noise, and I learned a lot.  The favorite tunes we played turned out to be a samba called Quando Quando Quando, with lyrics by Pat Boone, and a waltz-rendition of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.”  The young cats had never heard of the latter, but played it well, and told me, “Dude, you sang that tune like you wrote it!”  It was fun!  I was able to stick and jab – to back phrase – whenever I felt like it; much different from singing homophony with a quartet.  No rehearsal was necessary.

After each performance, we had a midnight buffet, and then I would stay up all night in my cabin, writing band-charts.  What was cool about that?  The band would play the chart the next night, and would then give me pointers about my writing.  It was a great experience, but after two years, I had enjoyed a lot of songs, and had learned everything the ship could teach me.  I came home, and fronted for the Don Krekel Orchestra, a big band in Louisville, for a couple years, before retiring from solo-singing.  It was a kick, but in the music biz, “you is either famous, or you is pore!”  My last gig was a party for some rich folks at the Galt House on New Year’s Eve of 2015. I looked marvelous, but filled the room with mediocrity.  Time to move on.

By that time, I had collaborated with Walter on some great charts, and I had written some myself that I liked, so I produced an a cappella recording, singing all four parts.  I called it “Walter and Me, and it appears with my three solo recordings on iTunes and CDbaby.com, under the artist-name Kenny Ray Hatton.

TW: Can you talk about some of the choruses you have had a chance to lead over the years? What advice could you give to aspiring choral-directors?

KH: It was always a dream to someday be front-line director of the Thoroughbreds.  At the same time, I had watched as the guys who followed John Wooden at UCLA and Adolph Rupp at University of Kentucky do well, but fail to come close to the records of the great ones.  I did not relish the thought of following Jim Miller with the ‘Breds.

Brother Allen got his shot when Jim resigned in 1985, as co-director with Ken Buckner.  Then, when Bunk left town to work for the Society in Kenosha, Allen was the man!  He did well, and if you listen to the recordings, the chorus did some of its best singing ever, under his direction.  But certain other choruses were getting better exponentially, and even though the T-Breds tied for first in 1990, the proverbial “coin-toss” went to Dr. Greg Lyne and his Masters of Harmony.  Egos, trends and politics divided our chapter after that. Choruses have a way of assigning all the credit for a chorus’s success and all the blame for its failures to the director, neither of which is true.  But directors and chorus-members know that going in, so I suppose it’s fair.

When Allen resigned in December of 1992, I was not active in the chorus, but the BOD sent guys to talk to me.  I had recently started my own business, and was not prepared to discuss the matter until August of 1993.  They had appointed a guy as “interim director,” while they conducted a “search.”  The Board asked me to keep quiet about their approach, so they could make that guy think he was getting the job permanently, while they waited six months for me.  I refused to make that promise, but I did not go out of my way to let him know. I regret that.  

That’s the thing about chorus-directing that I detested – the politics.  The official BOD of our beloved Thoroughbreds deceived that poor fellow, an action which was, in their minds, “in the best interests of the chapter.” I never understood how lying to a guy could ever be in the best interest of any chapter.  But that’s what you get, when you put humans in charge.

A seasoned judge once wrote, “You get good marks, and win a scholarship. You finish pre-law, and get into a great law-school, where you graduate with honors, and land a job as a clerk for a Federal judge.  You get on with a prestigious firm, and after several years, they make you a partner.  Then, you run for circuit-judge, and win the election.  Your first trial is almost over, and who makes the decision?  Two retired guys, three housewives, a file clerk, a bricklayer, a schoolteacher and ditch-digger!”  That’s kind of the way a barbershop chorus works.  The Board of Directors searches to find the most skilled and knowledgeable person they can to be the Music Director.  Then, knowing they are less qualified, they complicate your efforts with frequent attempts to micromanage. Unless you can earn enough implied authority with the troops, it is a built-in recipe for failure.      

Regardless, I showed up to accept the directorate in August, and we went to the Cardinal District prelims a few weeks later.  We won handily, with a group of about 70 men, and began to prepare for our annual Christmas Show, as well as the 1994 International Chorus Contest in Pittsburgh, with 92 guys on stage.  

International competition was a different story.  Our ranks had been decimated during the prior year by the formation of the Louisville Times Chorus by David Harrington and Mark Hale, along with a couple of dozen of our better singers. The new group had a tough audition for admission, and didn’t invite any of our “average” singers to participate.  Wonder where that idea came from?

That loss of so many good singers gave us a tougher row to hoe, but we started in earnest on the fundamentals.  We tackled a new Ed Waesche medley of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Billy-A-Dick” and Jule Styne’s Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat,” along with a new chart of “Till We Meet Again.”  We had Sally Whitledge, of International SAI Champion “4th Edition” fame as our choreographer, and her husband, Bob, of the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” was our bass section leader and one of our associate directors.

We worked hard, but the resulting performance was scored in the mid-80s; not up to the chorus’s reputation, nor to my standards.  I was privately embarrassed by the singing, even before the scoresheets revealed a 6th place finish.  Another year and two new contest songs later, our 1995 contest performance in Miami was equally embarrassing (to me), and the rank was identical (a gift, in my opinion). In the meantime, we had done a lot of exciting B-level singing on shows, and held on to most of our local following.

When Ken Buckner announced that he was moving back to Louisville, I was sure that he could lead the chorus to greater heights than I.  As it turned out, the performance we gave in the 1995 fall contest was the best singing the chorus had ever given under my direction.  I had my letter of resignation in my pocket, and handed it to the Chapter President immediately after we came off stage, and before the call-off.  I was finally proud of a contest-performance, even before I learned that we had won, and we had beaten the second place chorus, the Louisville Times, by 20 points. I handed the baton to Bunk, and wished him well.

Three years later, in February of 1998, the chorus was struggling even harder, and I was approached by the president and one of the associate directors to again serve as front line director.  When I showed up at the Board meeting to respond, both of those guys denied in my presence that they had approached me.  Once again, they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the guy who was in charge at the time.  More politics – more lying.  

I then announced to the Board that this idea must have come to me in a dream during the night.  I would be out in the parking lot long enough to have a smoke – about four minutes, and then my offer would be withdrawn. They came out and got me to serve as director three minutes later, but explained that they had to complete their “search,” so it would be a couple of months before I would start my term. That wasted time led to a slim defeat in the fall contest at the hands of our rivals, the Louisville Times – more embarrassment.  We weren’t even the best barbershop chorus in town!  Still, we received a “wild card” bid to participate in the International Chorus Contest, where they finished eighth, and we finished fifth.  

This time, I quickly got Brother Allen on Board, appointing him as co-director for the duration.  The group improved exponentially in preparation for the 1999 chorus contest in Anaheim.  We commissioned a new Waesche arrangement of the Irving Berlin tune, “Pack up Your Sins, and Go to the Devil,” and dusted off Ed’s old chart of “Over the Rainbow.”  The Anaheim contest saw the Thoroughbreds return to the medals, although it was a bronze, awarded for a 5TH place finish.  In the old days, it would have been disappointing, but our guys jumped for joy, as they had failed to even qualify for the dance the previous year (for the first time ever).

We seemed to have a tiger by the tail, but that’s when the wheels started to come off.  Allen and I agreed to implement individual performance-accountability, and divided the chorus into two groups – one performing group and the other remedial.  This was our way of competing against the “hand-picked” choruses – by focusing our teaching efforts on smaller groups and individuals where they were needed most. We had not predicted that the remedial group would be embarrassed to the extent that they would vote as a political block.  The following year, we competed with fewer singers, and dropped out of the top ten choruses, and in 2001, in Nashville, finished 14th. That was it!  Allen and I were pretty much out on our ear.  

We left the chapter with about 30 guys, and formed the New Horizon Chorus, leaving the ‘Breds in even worse shape.  We had allowed ourselves to be affected by the individual performance accountability standards which were running rampant around the Society, but our Thoroughbreds were not willing to accept them.  In retrospect, we would have been smarter to have continued the path of John Henry against the steam drill.  We still would not have won the championship, but we would have gone down swinging! Instead, we joined the plethora of chapters who had divided themselves in the interest of the elitist-singer. We had become what we had previously scorned.  We ended up with three “also-ran” choruses, in lieu of the mighty International Champion Thoroughbreds.  

In 2013, I moved to Alabama for work, and also accepted the job of Music Director of Voices of the South, in Birmingham, Alabama.  We started with sores of 68%, and (several times) raised those scores to the middle 70s. We finished second in our first spring chorus contest, and three years later. We tied for second, one point out of first, in my final contest performance as a director.  We sang some good shows during our three years, and the guys were kind enough to sing some of my arrangements, along with some written by my late pals, Walter and Ed, as well as two original songs written by my dear departed friend, Chilton Price and me.  I retired in 2016, because some physical ailments made it difficult to perform the athletic tasks associated with conducting.  Also, I had not been able to figure out how to grow the chorus. We started with 22 active, and we ended with 22 active.  I thought perhaps a younger guy could do better.            

What did I learn that I can share with aspiring chorus directors?  I was not smart enough to figure that  out.  All hail Jim Miller!  He used to say, “I hate when you guys whine, ‘I don’t know what to do, Jimmy.’  Maybe I’ll smack you in the balls, and then you’ll sure know what to do.  You’ll say, ouch!”  I wrote an e-book about Jim’s life called, “If Not for Jim,” available on Amazon and iBooks, which was released in 2012, a few months after his passing, at the age of 87. Read the book, and maybe you can get some advice from Jim. My advice is, if you don’t know what to do, stick to quartet-singing, or you might get smacked in the balls.    

TW: You’ve had a chance to work with so many amazing coaches over the years.  What is some of the best advice you have been given by a coach?

KH: Well… not so many.  In the 70s, Jim was too busy directing and singing in the Citations to coach us as a quartet.  Ed Gentry was already coaching the Citations, the Thoroughbreds and the Cardinals quartet.  My mother was our first coach, as previously mentioned.  Her lessons had to do with breath support and using the right muscles, which held us back at first, but raised the level at which we would perform later.  We failed to qualify for International in our first two attempts, in 1974 and 1975. However, we had won the Cardinal District Championship, in the fall of 1974, a year after our formation.  Back then, there just weren’t many good singing young quartets.  Most good ensembles were in their thirties, forties and fifties.  The hot-shots of our youth had been the Sundowners and the Grandmas Boys, who were six to ten years older than we.  

The Johnny Appleseed District had scouted us at our convention, and invited us to an all-expense paid trip to the JAD spring convention, in 1975.  There, we sang for the quartet contest audience, while the scores were being tallied. Let’s just say, we were having a good day.  We sang almost everything we knew, and there were money and panties thrown on the stage.  We got to our dressing rooms, and already had our jackets off, when the MC came to get us, and said, “They won’t stop clapping until you guys come back out here. They don’t care who won the quartet contest.”  

So, we went back out, and sang the only other song we knew; the Suntones’ “Lollipops and Roses,” being sure to apologize in advance for the fact that it wasn’t suitable for the contest stage.  In the judges’ pit that night was a man named Don Clause.  When we left Dayton on Sunday, he was our new coach. Don was one of the writers of the category description of the new “Sound” category, and was getting ready to be C&J Chairman, which we didn’t care about.  He was also the coach of the 1973 and 1974 International Champions, the Dealers Choice and the Regents.  We recognized him from his picture on the back of the DC’s first album, which we did care about.  

Within a year, Don had introduced us to several original Ed Waesche contest-arrangements, had us as his guests on Long Island for a weekend coaching session, had interpreted all four of our new contest songs (which we recorded), and had challenged us to master our craft, using the Society’s “green book,” a craft-manual patterned after the one Ed Gentry had written for the Thoroughbreds.

We didn’t always sing every phrase the way Don had instructed, but he never noticed that. What Don did for us was to convince us that we could master our craft, and provide a tie-breaker to keep us from arguing about how to sing each phrase.  We did all of our homework within six months, having applied our new craft to the four Waesche charts, including “Midnight Rose,” and “I’ve Found My Sweetheart, Sally.”  In the spring of 1976, at the ages of 20 and 21, BSU won the Cardinal prelims, and in San Francisco, in our first International Quartet Contest, we were awarded a 4th place medal.  That was the biggest thrill in my quartet career, to this day.  It was so unexpected by so many people, including us!

Don’s impact was the greatest, but not the only one from great coaches.  He put each of us in touch with our weaknesses.  Mine was pushing down low, instead of trusting my fellow singers to help create my note.  Ricky’s was forgetting the dynamic plan.  Danny’s challenge was to be firmer with his diction.  Allen’s was to keep his falsetto tenor balanced (softer).

Our visual presentation coach was the great Ron Riegler, from the Roaring Twenties, who came in fifth to our fourth, at the San Francisco Convention. Ron taught us to move to the outside when singing louder, and move to the inside when singing softer.  He taught us to do a preparatory move in the opposite direction from which we intended to move, like Jackie Gleason before he would say, “And away we go!” Sadly, Ron became gravely ill in early 1977, and passed away after the 1977 convention.  We recruited my high school drama teacher, Gene Stickler, to choreograph four new tunes for the 1977 and 1978 contests.  You would have sworn that Gene was Ron’s brother; they were so much alike!  

The third coach was a more modest fellow, also from Cincinnati, Ed Weber. Ed was a stage presence judge, who specialized in facial expression, focal point and the fundamentals of stage presence.  He taught us that it mattered where we looked in the audience during each phrase, and that our facial expression should be planned to mirror the emotion suggested by the changing message of the song.  Ed taught us never to raise our hands above the waist, unless there was a planned reason for them to be up there.  And don’t ever close your eyes.  They are the windows to the emotions.  

Our makeup guy was Joe Bruno, who taught us which stage makeup to buy, and how to apply it modestly, so that we looked normal and handsome on stage, rather than like a bunch of clowns.  The makeup was a part of our ritual of preparation, which helped us to feel an aura of invincibility before we took the stage.  The longhairs coming out of the universities to save us all from ourselves have since convinced our lazier members that such efforts are unnecessary. Consequently, their faces wash out in the stage lights, and we can see their expressions only by watching the big screen – when there is a big screen, that is.  We miss you, Joe.    

Our costume-designers included Louise Cecil, a professional, who made the brightly colored thrift-store knickerbockers that we wore during our three contest years for $143.75 – for all four them!  Another was clothier and barbershopper Mike Mazucca, who designed our unique kelly green tuxedos and our rose colored (pink) tuxedos for the other two contest sets. Our last costume-designer was Dan’s wife, Cyndy Burgess, who had a degree in Home Economics from the University of Kentucky.  She designed and built our Music Man costumes – the ones that appeared in the photograph, with the plumed hats and reversible jackets.  We wore them on stage for many years.  

TW: What are your thoughts on the evolution of the music-industry and songwriting over the course of your lifetime?  Are you happy with this evolution?

KH: Well first, let me say that Irving Scrooge Berlin was a greedy SOB. Besides refusing to allow barbershop arrangements of his songs because our genre was not “legitimate,” thanks to that stuck up, crusty old curmudgeon, who never learned to read a note of music, and played piano only by ear in the key of F sharp, and thanks to his lawyers, the term of a song-copyright was extended from 50 years after the copyright started to 90 years after the death of the longest surviving collaborator.  I don’t like that very much.

I am glad to see the money-people, whose only talent is to recognize and take advantage of the potential of others, finally being left out of the mix, thanks to technology.  With the advent of cell-phones, video and social media, any artist can reach the public directly with his or her songs, voice and instrument, from the safety and obscurity of his bathroom or basement. He or she no longer needs cow-tow to the David Fosters and Phil Specters of the world, in order to be “discovered.” If his or her talent is special, it will now be noticed by the real judges.  In the words of the late George Gershwin, “It is not the few knowing ones whose opinions make any work of art great; it is the judgment of the great mass that finally decides.”

Of course, I detest licensing agencies BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and abhor publishers Hal Leonard and Alfred Publishing for what they have done to the undiscovered songwriter and hobby-singer/player of music, and I am embarrassed and angry that our Society is playing ball with them.  By the way, BHS is both a licensing agency and a publisher.  The former group of pariahs caters only to the writers of songs featured in blockbuster movies, the top 100 grossing concerts annually and of protected works that get radio, TV and internet airplay.  The latter group is squeezing the rest of us out of mere participation by the high cost of permission to arrange, perform, record and promote, and our Society is helping them do it by agreeing to their terms.  

Our better option is to join together to boycott all protected works, and resort to Public Domain songs and original songs copyrighted by our own members, and to make sure not to allow any of those publishers or licensing agencies (or our Society) to participate in even partial ownership of our protected works. This happened once before, you know, when ASCAP got too big for its britches in the late 1940s, and took all of its catalogue off the radio airwaves. That’s what gave birth to the country music industry and caused BMI to be formed.  Perhaps such a boycott now, would birth another industry called a cappella. There are thousands of public domain songs that are very fine vehicles, and we are perfectly capable of writing our own songs that fit the style.  

Meanwhile, if you want to adapt any protected work to the barbershop style represented by one of these licensing agencies or publishers, just so your quartet or chorus can sing it in a show or a contest for which you might earn no moneys in exchange, please be prepared to pay several hundred dollars to the copyright owner, just in exchange for permission.  Of course, another way is to woodshed your own arrangement of a protected work, which constitutes “fair use,” under the law, as long as it is not written down. We used to all know how to do that!

TW: What personal accomplishment are you most proud of outside the world of barbershop harmony?  

KH: Many people like to say they are proud of their families.  I cannot take the credit for the successes of my children, and I will not take the blame for their failures.  We lead the horses to the water, but it is up to them to make the choice to drink.  I feel good about having done my job.  They did not ask to be brought into the world.  Their mother and I made that decision, and all three arrived kicking and screaming mad about it.  We owed them good food, clothing, shelter, education and love.  We paid our debt and provided additional things like cars and money after they were grown.  Since then, it has been up to them.  To their credit, they are all paying taxes, and none are drug-addicts or criminals. I am glad for their varying degrees of success, even while meeting different levels of hardship, because I love and want only good things for them.  But to be “proud” would claim responsibility for their success, which I cannot do.  There are people close to me who have had adult children who made wrong choices that resulted in incarceration and even death.  Those children enjoyed the same benefits that mine did.  If I claim credit for my own children’s success, I would be blaming other parents for the failures of their kids, which would be over-the-top inappropriate.  That’s why I cringe when I see parents bragging about “pride” in their adult children’s successes, and it’s why you won’t see claims of pride in my kids’ accomplishments on my Facebook page.  

That being clarified, I suppose I am proud of the fact that I work hard every day, and that I am not a burden on my family or on society.  I am proud of the kind of work I do, and that makes it necessary for this answer to overlap the answers to your good question numbers 15 and 16.

TW: Barbershoppers probably know you best as the energetic performer and lead singer of the Bluegrass Student Union, the 1978 quartet champs of the SPEBSQSA, now known as the Barbershop Harmony Society.  What are a few things that folks may NOT know about you?

KH: I can juggle.  I discovered as a teenager that I could isolate overtones with my voice, and play tunes with the overtones while holding the same note, simply by changing my mouth opening and tongue position.  I speak fluent Spanish.  I have not been able to walk farther than a block and a half without resting for ten minutes since 2003.  That will likely never change.  I didn’t like Irving Berlin when he was alive, and now that he is dead, I still do.  Oh yeah, we covered that.    

I have worked as a loading dock equipment and industrial doors application-expert on and off since 1986. When I entered the industry, I was sent to a school held by our main factory, which was called KELLEY, inventor and manufacturer of the hinged lip dock leveler, a bridge between the loading dock and the trailer bed.  The fellows who taught that school were the same ones who had been around since the invention of the device, in 1953.  They had been the first generation of sales persons, who introduced the product to American industry, and they imparted to me their noble mission.  Their product had revolutionized the safety and comfort of the loading dock worker, and, along with a later invention by a competitor (the trailer restraint), had saved the lives and limbs of countless people around the world, none of whom realized that they would have died or been maimed without it.  

Most businesses provide goods and services that help people in some way. We don’t all get to be astronauts or Supreme Court Justices. Most of us make our contributions to humankind in smaller, less famous ways.  On our tombstones, it won’t say, “He laid a lot of brick,” or “She counseled a lot of crazy people.”  On mine, it won’t say, “He sold a lot of levelers, restraints and overhead doors, and made sure they were properly installed.”  But that is exactly the thing of which I am most proud.  Funny how one can attain something akin to immortality by doing a little singing, but the day in and day out saving of lives by most of us who do it goes unnoticed.  

When I was a kid, I didn’t imagine growing up to be a dock leveler salesman. The job sort of found me, instead of the other way around.  But I developed a keen interest in the product and in applying and installing it correctly.  I found that once I embraced the noble motivation, my clients could sense that sincerity.  When I get the job, lives are saved, the work area is more comfortable, the customer’s management enjoys the savings that comes with increased productivity, and my commissions take care of themselves.  It’s a great business, because my degree of personal fulfillment just happens to be commensurate with the financial rewards.  What a great country!  I have to believe that unless you are a criminal, or you work in the liquor- or tobacco-industry, your job probably offers similar fulfillment.  We are all here to serve each other, and most jobs allow you to do that.  I can only hope that it brings you similar rewards.  

TW: What’s the next item on your bucket list?

KH: That’s a tough question, because I have had such a great life!  I had two marriages that lasted a total of 36 years, and 29 of them were pretty darned good.  I loved me some women.  I am now divorced and single, and life is really stress-free these days.  My three kids are healthy and standing on their own six feet.  I have a special relationship with my son, Mike.  I always treated him as an equal; not as a child.  As a result, he is now my friend, in addition to being my son, which pleases me very much.  I enjoy my work, and will never retire, as long as I can walk and think.  I have lived many of my dreams, helping the Thoroughbreds to earn four gold medals and some other colors too, winning quartet contests with my three “brothers,” Allen, Danny and Rick, and then going on to join the Suntones-Buffalo Bills-Boston Common-club.  I got to direct the Thoroughbreds in competition on several occasions, although it didn’t turn out as well as I had envisioned. I traveled around the world a few times, and got to visit 47 states, most of them multiple times.  I directed a chorus across mainland China for four 2-week trips, and coached my way across New Zealand and Australia.  I learned how to arrange music, with no formal education, and I sang professionally in jazz clubs with a great accompanist.  I became friends and wrote songs with a real award-winning Great American Songbook writer.  I met idols, heroes, presidents and other famous people along the way, who all turned out to be regular guys, just like me.  My quartet recorded some of the best-selling barbershop-recordings of all time.  I recorded a big band album with 33 top musicians that sounds like it belongs on the Sirius Sinatra channel.  I wrote a biography about the life of my mentor, Jim Miller.  I made a barbershop recording dedicated to my other mentor, Walter Latzko.  I made three recordings that honored yet another mentor, Ms. Chilton Price.  I wrote original songs and arrangements, and heard them sung by others.  On occasion, I even got to perform on the ‘lectric television.  Hoo-wee!  

I promise you that I have done everything that I wanted to do, and more.  I have a few regrets, but owe no amends.  There is no bucket-list, but I discovered something else that I enjoy, just this past year.  You see, I moved to Alabama five years ago, for my work, and I have no “old friends” here. New friends are nice, but there is nothing like the friends with whom you share some history.  I see Allen, Rick and Dan once a year, at a reunion at Allen’s lake house.  I hate to think that I might see those guys only a handful (or two) more times before one of us takes a header.

I have other friends around the country, with whom I stay in touch.  Still, there are others who I care about deeply, but don’t get to see anymore.  Last June, I visited Marjorie Latzko at her home in Lewes Delaware, where she lives, with her daughter, Melanie and her husband and two boys.  Marjorie is one of the tenors of the Chordettes, of Mr. Sandman fame, besides being Walter’s devoted wife for over 50 years and one of my dearest friends.  After a great three day visit, I took the ferry across Delaware Bay, to Cape May, New Jersey, and drove to Brigantine, where I met with old friend Carol Plum. We took her parents, Ellen and Neal, out to dinner, and enjoyed reminiscing about his quartet, Sound Revival, back in the 70s and 80s.  

The next morning, I met pal Jack Pinto, of Old School quartet, for breakfast, and we traveled to New York City, where we had dinner with genius arranger, judge and quartet-man Steve Delehanty and his wife, Connie, along with medalist lead singer Scott Brannon, of the Cincinnati Kids.  I enjoyed spending time with these many good friends, and made a new friend, Keith Harris, the barbershopper and professional opera-singer.  It took some effort and expense on my part, but this was more fun and fulfilling than going around the world.  I did that already, and got paid for it – twice!  It couldn’t be as much fun the third time, especially if I’m paying.  But this trip was a gas, because I got to see those lovely people one more time.  

So, I don’t have a bucket-list of things I want to do and experience.  I just want to see my old friends one more time.  So, I have already planned my trip for 2018.  In February, I will see Todd and Jennifer Wilson, in Nashville, and then hop on a plane to see Holly and Brian Beck in Colorado Springs.  With any luck, Bobby Gray and Terri will be available for dinner, and maybe I can sneak in a luncheon with George Davidson, Terry Heltne and Kurt Hutchison in Denver, before visiting old quartet-buddy, Vince Winans and his wife in Salt Lake City. After a couple of days, I will head for Palm Springs, California, to visit former Thoroughbred Jonathan Friedman and his wife, Annabelle, where they will introduce me to their new baby girl, who is to be born next month.  Then, it’s on to Oakland, where I will spend a few days watching some of my grandkids play soccer and volleyball.  

I might try to visit old pal Greg Lyne, while I am there.  He always tries to tell me that the Thoroughbreds should have won that contest in 1990.  I like that about him.

[20qs20somethings]

Chase, 28

1. Can you use three to five words to describe our generation?  Misunderstood, Neglected, Ambitious, Narrow-Minded, Active

2. What’s your relationship with social media like? It’s love hate I think like most people. I perfectly curate my life on it and I know that everyone else perfectly curates their life to be a perfect museum exhibit and it can be nerve wracking. I tend to be funny on social media as a way of dealing with things and I get a lot of my validation strangely from people liking and giving me positive comments on my posts because it means I’ve impacted them or made them laugh. 

3. Where has our generation failed and where have we succeeded? I think our generation and the generation that follows us has succeeded in understanding groups of people en masse in ways that earlier generations have and cannot. I think one place where the generation fails is the reaction individuals have when they meet people or interact with people who have a different viewpoint, a more traditional viewpoint on some things, or lack the capacity and experience to fully understand social justice or what the issue may be. I think millennials tend to overreact instead of trying to have a conversation that’s productive and able to bring the person they’re talking to closer to their viewpoint or at least to a mutual understanding.

4. Who or what is your biggest motivator in life? Internal ambition to succeed. Something intrinsic that was fostered by my mother. Even though my parents are divorced, I grew up in a very loving environment before and after in which they supported my brother and I. So I think that helped foster a really great sense of wanting to accomplish things and I was sort of the golden child of my church and school which does lend itself to a lot of self imposed stress so though that motivates me, i think it hinders me in a lot of ways too because I don’t handle those failures well. 

5. Do you believe in love? Yeah, I believe in different types of love. Platonic love, the people that bring joy to your life. Familial love, I very much love my family. Romantic love, I have not particularly had that experience, but I’ve had a lot of unrequited love. So I do believe in love, I believe it is a powerful and sometimes destructive force. 

6. What’s something you think people assume of you based on your internet persona? That I have my life together. That I’m a happy person naturally, that I have nothing but successes when in reality, I have constant internal doubt and I’m very self conscious about things and sometimes I sprinkle posts with a little bit of that. Maybe some people pick up on it, maybe some people have. But I think the major misconception that people really buy into my social media persona is who I am. Some of it is me, but it is perfectly curated for maximum likes.

7. What’s one thing you want people to know about you? That I live in a state of conflicted feelings. I was born and raised in Kentucky in a very pretty conservative place. I never felt regressed or oppressed. I grew up in church and I never had a reason like some other millennials, in particular gay millennials, have to sort of reject religion because the best people I ever knew that cared for me the most was my church family so I never fully rejected that or those values that have shifted my viewpoints and philosophies and theological perceptions of religion. 

At the same time, I live in an urban environment that is diverse in thought, religion, I’m part of an LGBTQ community that doesn’t accept that I’ve held on to a lot of things I grew up with. Add that to the fact that I’m a moderate republican operative and it’s not great for the dating life. It also creates conflict because I don’t know exactly where I fit into the LGBT community. There are people who support it and there are those who lay into me, particularly now that Donald Trump is President. For some reason, even though I didn't vote for him, they think I have to own him, own his policies, and his presidency which I do not. 

8. Fill in the blank: “Happiness is _______” Ephemeral for me. I’m not naturally happy and I have to work very hard for that. I think happiness requires a base of contentment and if you’re not content with things, you can’t build off of that into feeling fully happy and in a happy mood. I’d say ephemeral because it’s in this fast paced, ever changing dynamic of the society that we live in. It’s easy for something to come and knock you out of a good, happy state.

9. Do you think you’re represented in things you consume in media? (TV, Movies, Books, etc.) Well I identify in several different ways. I think LGBT, yeah there’s always going to be complaints that there isn’t enough positive representation in media, but in comparison to 10 years ago, it’s only growing and stories are being told. As someone from Appalachia, no. I think if you look at a lot of shows on television, you don’t have those Roseanne’s anymore, you don’t have shows that focus on a blue collar perspective anymore. On the whole, I would say yeah, I am a white male so I am well represented. 

10. Who or what brings you the greatest joy in your life? Moment’s where I’m with people that I enjoy, doing something I enjoy, laughing, making them laugh and having a bonding moment whether with family or friends that people enjoy engaging in.

11. How did you feel after November 8th? I was very conflicted. I like, most people had resigned myself that Hillary was going to win and I was more comfortable with her in a leadership position than the person that was the nominee of my own party. I am not a Donald Trump republican and in many ways, the party, and what he represents is diametrically opposed to many of the ideas that I came into my political own believing. I was very conflicted, I was happy we retained congress, sad that one of my favorite members lost her reelection campaign. 

I’ve still been conflicted this whole time because there’s this sensible part of me that feels like I’m being told that I have to participate in the public flogging of the President, his supporters, and his ideas to be considered a kind compassionate human being. On the other side, the political, professional side of me is like, “I can’t do that because is that disloyal to party?” I have my conversations with my own friends about what he’s doing wrong with pretty much everything. But there is a pressure to feel like I have to own him and his policies.

12. What are your thoughts on marriage? I’d like to be married. I think marriage is a covenant, a promise that you make to another person and to God that you will become one unit, one individual. Do I think you need to be married to be happy? No, but I think that’s up to everyone. I think marriage is very important, it’s important to find the right person and to develop techniques to solve your problems and work through issues. I sometimes wonder, it’s been very difficult for me to find people to date or fall in love with and see myself getting married with. I almost wonder if that’s because I’m supposed to be waiting to find the right person that’s going to be able to have that same concept of marriage.

13. What do you want out of this life? That happiness that I said was ephemeral. I want to be content I want to recognize my blessings because I sometimes forget that.

14. What would you say is your biggest character flaw? There’s quite a few. I think it’s definitely being self conscious to the point of over compensation. So I want people to like me I want to be a people pleaser and I try to do that on social media and if somebody says something to me that makes me think that they don’t like me or they're upset with me, it sticks with me for weeks. Again, I overcompensate by trying to be the fun guy at the party so that everyone will like me. Impatience as well in my career and my romantic life. 

15. How do you want to be remembered? As someone who made people laugh. As someone who hopefully made people feel good about themselves, who was kind. Someone who was creative, thoughtful, and I do hope my memory lasts beyond my death through some accomplishment, even if its a footnote of a footnote in history books.

16. What are qualities that you value? Kindness, compassion, good humor, hard work, thoughtfulness

17. How would you describe what it’s like to navigate your 20s? Exhausting. I think it’s a time when you want to have fun, especially if you’re single. But it’s also a time where you want to be serious and further your career and those can be difficult things to balance. It’s a chaotic time. I think that’s true for many generations. The 20s is when a generation is in that time period, is when they’re most judged by older generations because they’re trying to adjust, adapt, and figure their shit out. It’s unfair for baby boomers who have bankrupted America to be like “millennials are lazy.” Bitch, you bought things you can’t pay for. 

18. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far? I’m in the process of learning how to not let stress and anxiety overpower me. That everything will be fine and turn out right if I don’t meet my goals and I struggle with that on a daily basis and how to cope with those emotions. Beyond that, I think trying to learn patience and realizing that patience is needed. 

I think everyone thinks that when they come out of college that they’re going to hit the ground running that you’re gonna go one hurdle after another. I think it’s really interesting because after college is the first time when you have an open ended life. Up until that point, there’s always something on the horizon when you finish high school, you know the next year you’re going to college, you know you’ll do an internship, you’ll know you go back to school. When you’re out of college, you’re like know what? There’s no natural thing coming at me from the horizon except age and I’ve got to go out and figure it out and that can be daunting for people.

19. What are you scared of? Being alone. Not finding love to not find someone I love and care for. 

20. What is the best piece of advice you want to leave the world with? Just smile more, laugh more, because at the end of the day that’s what’s gonna make your day worth it, it’s those happy moments.

[falsedescent]

1 In The Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (Capitol) 1955

Actually, the very first 'concept' album. The idea being you put this record on after dinner and by the last song you are exactly where you want to be. Sinatra said that he's certain most baby boomers were conceived with this as the soundtrack.

2 Solo Monk by Thelonious Monk (Columbia) 1964

Monk said 'There is no wrong note, it has to do with how you resolve it'. He almost sounded like a kid taking piano lessons. I could relate to that when I first started playing the piano, because he was decomposing the music while he was playing it. It was like demystifying the sound, because there is a certain veneer to jazz and to any music, after a while it gets traffic rules, and the music takes a backseat to the rules. It's like aerial photography, telling you that this is how we do it. That happens in folk music too. Try playing with a bluegrass group and introducing new ideas. Forget about it. They look at you like you're a communist. On Solo Monk, he appears to be composing as he plays, extending intervals, voicing chords with impossible clusters of notes. 'I Should Care' kills me, a communion wine with a twist. Stride, church, jump rope, Bartok, melodies scratched into the plaster with a knife. A bold iconoclast. Solo Monk lets you not only see these melodies without clothes, but without skin. This is astronaut music from Bedlam.

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3 Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (Straight) 1969

The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud. Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that'll never be beat, it's a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more.

4 Exile On Main St. by Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones Records) 1972

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'I Just Want To See His Face' - that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, 'I've got to learn how to do that.' I couldn't really do it until I stopped smoking. That's when it started getting easier to do. [Waits's own] 'Shore Leave' has that, 'All Stripped Down', 'Temptation'. Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince. But this is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole. Keith Richards plays his ass off. This has the Checkerboard Lounge all over it.

5 The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars (Point Music) 1975

This is difficult to find, have you heard this? It's a musical impression of the sinking of the Titanic. You hear a small chamber orchestra playing in the background, and then slowly it starts to go under water, while they play. It also has 'Jesus Blood' on it. I did a version of that with Gavin Bryars. I first heard it on my wife's birthday, at about two in the morning in the kitchen, and I taped it. For a long time I just had a little crummy cassette of this song, didn't know where it came from, it was on one of those Pacifica radio stations where you can play anything you want. This is really an interesting evening's music.

6 The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan (Columbia) 1975

With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it's difficult so say anything about him that hasn't already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in - so the bootlegs I obtained in the Sixties and Seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it's also a history lesson.

7 Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards (EG) 1980

They used to accuse John Lurie of doing fake jazz - a lot of posture, a lot of volume. When I first heard it, it was so loud, I wanted to go outside and listen through the door, and it was jazz. And that was an unusual thing, in New York, to go to a club and hear jazz that loud, at the same volume people were listening to punk rock. Get the first record, The Lounge Lizards. You know, John's one of those people, if you walk into a field with him, he'll pick up an old pipe and start to play it, and get a really good sound out of it. He's very musical, works with the best musicians, but never go fishing with him. He's a great arranger and composer with an odd sense of humour.

8 Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues (Stiff) 1985

Sometimes when things are real flat, you want to hear something flat, other times you just want to project onto it, something more like.... you might want to hear the Pogues. Because they love the West. They love all those old movies. The thing about Ireland, the idea that you can get into a car and point it towards California and drive it for the next five days is like Euphoria, because in Ireland you just keep going around in circles, those tiny little roads. 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Old Main Drag'. Shane has the gift. I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious, wear it out and then get another one.

9 I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen (Columbia) 1988

Euro, klezmer, chansons, apocalyptic, revelations, with that mellifluous voice. A shipwrecked Aznovar, washed up on shore. Important songs, meditative, authoritative, and Leonard is a poet, an Extra Large one.

10 The Specialty Sessions by Little Richard (Specialty Records) 1989

The steam and chug of 'Lucille' alone pointed a finger that showed the way. The equipment wasn't meant to be treated this way. The needle is still in the red.

11 Startime by James Brown (Polydor) 1991

I first saw James Brown in 1962 at an outdoor theatre in San Diego and it was indescribable... it was like putting a finger in a light socket. He did the whole thing with the cape. He did 'Please Please Please'. It was such a spectacle. It had all the pageantry of the Catholic Church. It was really like seeing mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas and you couldn't ignore the impact of it in your life. You'd been changed, your life is changed now. And everybody wanted to step down, step forward, take communion, take sacrament, they wanted to get close to the stage and be anointed with his sweat, his cold sweat.

12 Bohemian-Moravian Bands by Texas-Czech (Folk Lyric) 1993

I love these Czech-Bavarian bands that landed in Texas of all places. The seminal river for mariachi came from that migration to that part of the United States, bringing the accordion over, just like the drum and fife music of post slavery, they picked up the revolutionary war instruments and played blues on them. This music is both sour and bitter, and picante, and floating above itself like steam over the kettle. There's a piece called the 'Circling Pigeons Waltz', it's the most beautiful thing - kind of sour, like a wheel about to go off the road all the time. It's the most lilting little waltz. It's accordion, soprano sax, clarinet, bass, banjo and percussion.

13 The Yellow Shark by Frank Zappa (Barking Pumpkin) 1993It is his last major work. The ensemble is awe-inspiring. It is a rich pageant of texture in colour. It's the clarity of his perfect madness, and mastery. Frank governs with Elmore James on his left and Stravinsky on his right. Frank reigns and rules with the strangest tools.14 Passion for Opera Aria (EMI Classics) 1994I heard 'Nessun Dorma' in the kitchen at Coppola's with Raul Julia one night, and it changed my life, that particular Aria. I had never heard it. He asked me if I had ever heard it, and I said no, and he was like, as if I said I've never had spaghetti and meatballs - 'Oh My God, Oh My God!' - and he grabbed me and he brought me into the jukebox (there was a jukebox in the kitchen) and he put that on and he just kind of left me there. It was like giving a cigar to a five-year old. I turned blue, and I cried.15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks (Rykodisc) 1997Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce's. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can't.16 Prison Songs: Murderous Home Alan Lomax Collection (Rounder Select) 1997Without spirituals and the Baptist Church and the whole African-American experience in this country, I don't know what we would consider music, I don't know what we'd all be drinking from. It's in the water. The impact the whole black experience continues to have on all musicians is immeasurable. Lomax recorded everything, from the sounds of the junkyard to the sound of a cash register in the market... disappearing machinery that we would no longer be hearing. You know, one thing that doesn't change is the sound of kids getting out of school. Record that in 1921, record that now, it's the same sound. The good thing about these is that they're so raw, they're recorded so raw, that it's just like listening to a landscape. It's like listening to a big open field. You hear other things in the background. You hear people talking while they are singing. It's the hair in the gate.

17 Cubanos Postizos by Marc Ribot (Atlantic) 1998

This Atlantic recording shows off one of many of Ribot's incarnations as a prosthetic Cuban. They are hot and Marc dazzles us with his bottomless soul. Shaking and burning like a native.

18 Houndog by Houndog (Sony) 1999

Houndog, the David Hidalgo [Los Lobos] record he did with Mike Halby [Canned Heat]. Now that's a good record to listen to when you drive through Texas. I can't get enough of that. Anything by Latin Playboys, anything by Los Lobos. They are like a fountain. The Colossal Head album killed me. Those guys are so wild, and they've gotten so cubist. They've become like Picasso. They've gone from being purely ethnic and classical, to this strange, indescribable item that they are now. They're worthwhile to listen to under any circumstances. But the sound he got on Houndog, on the electric violin ... the whole record is a dusty road. Dark and burnished and mostly unfurnished. Superb texture and reverb. Lo fi and its highest level. Songs of depth and atmosphere. It ain't nothin' but a...

19 Purple Onion by Les Claypool (Prawn Song) 2002

Les Claypool's sharp and imaginative, contemporary ironic humour and lightning musicianship makes me think of Frank Zappa. 'Dee's Diner' is like a great song your kid makes up in the car on the way to the drive-in. Songs for big kids.

20 The Delivery Man by Elvis Costello (Mercury) 2004

Scalding hot bedlam, monkey to man needle time. I'd hate to be balled out by him, I'd quit first. Grooves wide enough to put your foot in and the bass player is a gorilla of groove. Pete Thomas, still one of the best rock drummers alive. Diatribes and rants with steam and funk. It has locomotion and heat. Steam heat, that is.

[pensurfing]

Caitlin’s Three Things List

Okay, so moments (probably hours by the time I finish this) ago I wrote a goals list that I think is good for self-evaluation. (Keyword: This is what I think. results may vary depending on what you’re looking for.)

I’m going to hop to it and answer some of these that I laid out in hopes of having a better idea of what I want to accomplish. 

The Three Things Lists!

1) Three things that went well this year.

* Audience growth

So once upon a time, I grew a pretty decent following due to creating an Inktober Prompt list. My expectations: Maybe two of my friends would do this, maybe. And then one stranger that has followed me for a while. (There are a few followers I recognize their username because if I post something they always like it and for some reason that keeps me going.)

But because of this prompt, I was exposed to MANY new creators and illustrators that I now enjoy chatting with and following! Instagram had the biggest maintained growth. I’m excited to create for an audience that actually expects me to create and not just for friends who see my things “whenever they aren’t busy”. (Not to bash them or anything, just there are a lot where unless I tell them, they don’t see the posts I make.)

Another surge of growth in my audience was due to tabling at conventions this year. I was terrified to show my work let alone attempt to sell it to someone. Tabling at cons not only boosted my confidence but also quieted one of my ever going demons. “YoU sUcK aT dRaWiNg CaItLiN.” “How do you have a degree? oh right, you just barely passed.” I can’t say this is the case, there is an audience that genuinely enjoys my scribbles. So I am forever thankful to Atlanta Comic Con for giving me that chance. It honestly opened a few doors for me.

**Process

I’ve gotten more comfortable with showing my process. It can be messy, crisp, and illogical. But turns out the people who enjoy my content enjoy my scrambled thoughts. It’s something about not being alone in this sort of sense that calms the nerves.

So I can say with chest poked out that sharing process has gotten MUCH better. I can thank a self-help book I bought this year that was a FANTASTIC BUY. Austin Kleon has [two] (currently? If he has more then I’m buying it like people buy a name brand.) books that helped me see that it is GREAT to share not only the process but advice. “Show Your Work” is the book I’m talking about for now. Great tips, the outline is on the back of the book. So if you’re like me, I need to clearly see what I might be getting into, you might have a ball.

And finally, (not calling myself out on this but other) If you’re going to respond to people when they ask you “how do you___?” do not answer “Google it”. That is the rudest thing I’ve seen some of even my FAVORITE illustrators do; that response can burn in hell. PERIODT. (my one typo allowed.)

*** Art Style Exploration

For those who think college will help you establish an art style that you’ll enjoy or help nourish the one you currently have.... Let me save you over 80K.... No, the fuck it won’t.

That was the biggest thought I had going into art school. If anything, it confused me more and utterly destroyed what little confidence I had in my drawing style. After graduating, I had a huge swing from how I used to draw to how my art currently looks. I stopped trying to please the one professor who stood between me and my degree and started drawing to please my tastes. And guess what? That did something. And that something WORKED. I love what I draw now; I see why I chose this as my career path. I’m genuinely happy with how my pieces turn out versus in college just wanting to turn the damn thing in and hoping it isn’t an F.

2) Three things you could have handled better.

* The loss of a good paying client.

Now hear me out when I say this: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL a good client. Say that three times and then exhale.

Back earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with a writer who gave me hell and back. And even that is an understatement. I dealt with her because in school you were taught “if they pay on time, finish the work and get the exposure.” 

I’m here to tell you my lesson learned: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL good exposure, good pay, a good client. 

I was doing the work of three for the price of one and a half. (And was always told I charged too much.) She tried abusing this power with friends of mine, with other illustrators. When things turned out bad, she tried saying it was my fault. She read my contract and then tried telling me I changed the wording, I purposely did this thing, another thing was my fault. I could go on with this story.

The part that I wish I handled better?

How I treated myself afterward. I’m so used to people telling me, “Cait, this is what you do wrong. This is how you fix it.” that I don’t consider my own feelings, and when I bring my feelings into the scenario they no longer matter. Because they tell me they don’t matter. In this case, I wish I had treated me better, because my feelings, my mental health, DOES matter.

**My Patience Getting Into Conventions.

Pretty self-explanatory. I got into one, finished one, and wanted to do eight more in a week. But this sort of thing just takes time and I need to accept that.

***My losses

I had to listen to a Little Mix song to actually learn this one. The context of the song is nowhere near the topic at hand. But a verse from Power feat Stomzy really packs a punch after this year: 

“ You look him in the eye and say, "I know I'm not a guy But see there's power in my losses and there's power in my wins" “

I had to look one of my demons in the face, and state something similar. My loses mean I’m trying. My loses piling shows I’m not willing to give up easily, and that is something that took a while to be content with.

3) Three things artistically you want to improve on.

*Composition

It’s not awful, but it can be better.

**Color

I told this BOLDLY if I might add while critiquing someone else’s portfolio; “Your color palette is boring. All your [things] look as if they are from the same universe, during the same time of day, with the same kind of mood. After three photos it’s bland, boring, and understood you have a preference.” 

Can you say damn Cait? The statement was, in fact, true, but I certainly could not talk. My color palette is mainly bright, pop, and happy. In order to tell a story, I KNOW it is best told with color. And I failed myself this year. But I sure won’t next year.

***My Damn Tag

Okay, alright. Why is it well-established artists have their tag figured out? Even some who’s art style is so recognizable (I’m looking HEAVILY at you Gabriel Piccolo.) we know it’s theirs, seem to have a tag that suits them and works for them. But more importantly, they put it in A VERY DECENT SPOT. SOMEONE SHARE THIS SCIENCE WITH ME? CAUSE APPARENTLY I DON’T GET IT.

4) Three things you want to focus on trying.

*More backgrounds.

As much as it pains me, I need to improve on backgrounds and perspective. When I do make backgrounds, I’m told I make great pieces. That I should look into becoming a background artist. And don’t get me wrong, I like them. But I don’t like them.

I feel as though I need to improve in that region so that way I don’t feel as though it’s a weakness of mine. My backgrounds are nice, but they aren’t nice to my standards.

**More designs

I love character designs, but let’s be real. If you were to scroll down my site or my Instagram page, or even this Tumblr archive, could you tell? 

I draw characters a lot sure, but none are designs. No process, no sheets, no turnarounds, none of that. So that’s a huge goal of mine for 2019.

***Scheduling posting

At one point I was pretty good at this. Live stream in Instagram and Twitter, cool. Videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Cool. Everywhere gets a photo, everywhere gets a silly one-liner. Yay. I’m not leaving anything out.

Well by the end of this year that totally crumbled. 

SO I want to try getting better at that thing there. Because having attempted this at the end of the year was cool, but it still wasn’t enough apparently.

5) Three positive things to tell yourself.

* You are an inspiration. That’s all you wanted to be in life, you did it. I’m proud of you.

**You didn’t kill yourself like you tried to; you opened up about it for once and used that pint up anger creatively. That is very hard to do, trust. I’m proud of you.

***You moved on, matured, and let it go. Even when the goddess inside you told you these peasants didn’t deserve your light, your friendship, your greatness. I’m proud of you.

I’m just proud of me for not snapping when I had every right to; not everything deserves a reaction.

6) Three negative things you want to leave for 2018.

*Comparisons 

Oh boy. I am extremely guilty for this: I’ll compare myself to a well-known illustrator my age. I’ll compare myself to friends who are in the field having a blast and getting work; I’ll compare myself to friends who aren’t in the field and they struggle at getting work. I’ll compare myself to the kid I graduated high school with who is traveling the world, is able to eat, come home to his dog and relax because he doesn’t have tuition to pay. I’ll compare myself to these goddamn baby boomers who keep repeating “We didn’t have it hard, you’re just being stupid. Millennials aka our children deserve to starve. We’ll just put our faith in our grandchildren because screw the kids we raised and refuse to pay accordingly. $7 an hour worked in my day, they need to make it work now.” I’ll compare myself to fake people I created in my head and purposely made scenarios and wonder why I’m not like them, said creations I made because I was pretty low for ten minutes...

I just compare myself too much. To any damn body. It’s draining, obnoxious and most of all pointless. My new motto for next year is: “Unless it is helping you grow yourself, your brand, your spirituality, don’t do it.”

I’m not comparing my chapter two to someone’s chapter thirty-five. I’m not even comparing my chapter two to someone else’s chapter two. I need to stop doing that PERIOD! My journey is different, unique, and worth seeing through.

**Listening to negative others.

A couple of years ago, I lost a close friend around the time my aunt passed away. During this time I was hypersensitive to any and everything done or said; I also kept many walls up to hide my mourning. He caught the crossfire of all of that. I kept secrets from him I was too prideful of admitting and lashed out because of the emotional turmoil I kept suppressed. While in the midst of packing his things and leaving my life, he mentioned that I was a failure because I was unemployed and artistically speaking I hadn’t accomplished anything; that I would remain that way because that’s just the person I deserved to be. Now mind you, I graduated college that year; he was a flunk out. I changed my art style dramatically compared to when I started school to pass; he thought just posting crappy pictures of lukewarm sketches were equivalent. I started attempting trends and all he could do was copy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to bash my old friend. If he were to come back into my life and move on like nothing had happened I’d do the same. (With some limitations.)

It’s just while typing out this scenario, of our four-year friendship I can’t think of one nice thing/compliment/gesture he has said to me. That’s my problem.

I can be praised, admired, and look highly upon for years straight. But my problem is I let others negative thinking and comments marinate with me for a long while. Too long of a while.

Another example is my mother’s friend. (My mom has many friends that do this shit, but this one stung more.) 

This friend always roots for me; treats me like a person, and encourages my artistic journey. I consider her family before my actual relatives. 

We went over for some barbeque the family was having and I was ready. Black Hallmark Cookouts, laughing, good food, good music, shit talking others teams. She asked me a harmless question of when was I going to quit my day job. Seemed like nothing at first, until the added gest of what she continued with. “All I’m saying is you can’t do [your day job] forever. That will get old. If the art thing doesn’t work out next year what’s plan b?”

I’m not a calm person (usually). Normal Caitlin would have cursed her out and mentioned how just because she chose a job to settle and be miserable at for most of her life doesn’t mean I have to follow suit. But again, of all the nice encouraging things she has done, said, and showed, for a while, I couldn’t think of it. 

So I pray I let go of this nasty behavior in 2018; it’s going to be hard but it is dire.

***Saying I’m Not Enough

Alright, now put the combination of the two above in a bowl and what do you get? A Caitlin who struggles in interviews and applying for jobs because I let comparisons and negative comments rule my thoughts. This stopped me from applying to jobs I would have been perfect for; internships that could have helped me; posting art online.

We (including me) have to stop thinking that in order to be an illustrator means we have to pass a certain threshold of struggle, success, and a huge number of followers. That isn’t the job description. NO JOB DESCRIPTION has ”must have at least 10K followers on Instagram or Twitter.” nOnE. 

So we (including me) need to stop treating ourselves this way. Period.

7) Three things you’re looking forward to in 2019.

*Going to move conventions.

**Adding pieces to my portfolio to try again at job hunting.

***Becoming content with the fact that my current situation isn’t my permanent situation. Unless I laze around and make it so.

Alright, so this was basically me calling myself out on my noise. Lashing out my demons and putting it in writing what I want to accomplish. I hope this inspires you to write yours, even if you keep it private. I hope it guides you and maintains your vision.

I’ll see you in 2019

A new wave

Caitlin xx

[andrewromanoyahoo]

Colorado’s Governor John Hickenlooper warily learns to live with pot

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in the Colorado State Capitol. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

When the people of Colorado voted in 2012 to legalize recreational marijuana, they instantly transformed their governor, John Hickenlooper, into America’s most reluctant pot pioneer. Citing various risks, the rangy Democrat warned Coloradans not to “break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.”

“If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have done it,” Hickenlooper admitted. “I opposed it from the very beginning.”

But the governor didn’t have a choice — and now, after nearly five years of overseeing what has become a $1 billion industry, he considers himself “cautiously optimistic.”

“We were worried about everything,” Hickenlooper tells Yahoo News. “We were worried about kid usage going up, people coming into work high, the branding of the state. We haven’t seen anything negative in regard to any of those things.”

In early April, Hickenlooper spoke to us about the factors and forces that have softened his stance, how Colorado families are benefiting from legalization, and his own experiences with marijuana as both a son and a father.

Excerpts:

YAHOO NEWS: You opposed Amendment 64, saying it wasn’t worth the risk. What were you afraid would happen if Colorado legalized recreational marijuana?

GOV. JOHN HICKENLOOPER: I was afraid that we would see a spike in teenage use and a rapid increase in overall use. And a big part of my reluctance was that, as a governor, you don’t want to be in conflict with federal law. Even Amsterdam never fully legalized marijuana — they set up a regulatory system to tax it. To do something that literally no one in the world had ever done before … it’s a steep hill.

You have a teenage son. He was 8 at the time. How did being a father influence your views on legalization?

Obviously having a son who’s just coming into the age when a lot of the brain scientists believe that this high-THC marijuana is most damaging … that was difficult. They say there’s a high probability that you’ll lose a sliver of your long-term memory every time you use this high-THC marijuana. So I was worried that teenagers like my son would think that if the adults have legalized this, it must be OK.

Nearly five years have passed since Colorado embarked on this experiment. What were you right to worry about? What were you wrong to worry about?

We were wrong to worry about a dramatic spike in overall usage and teenage usage. Basically, the people who were smoking marijuana before it was legal still are. The people who weren’t smoking marijuana before it was legal still aren’t.

We were worried about everything. We were worried about kid usage going up, people coming into work high, the branding of the state. We haven’t seen anything negative in regard to any of those things.

Haven’t some studies shown that teenage use is up?

Not in Colorado. People fight over which data sets to use, but the largest database we have — it’s thousands of kids — shows that teenage use is essentially flat.

In fact, it’s the same thing across all age groups — with the exception of senior citizens. More senior citizens appear to be smoking. Not a huge amount, but more. A 5 or 6 percent increase.

That’s interesting. Why?

We’re not sure if it’s pain mitigation or if it’s just baby boomers remembering their high school days. [Laughs] I don’t know what that is.

Would you support Amendment 64 today, knowing what you now know?

You know, it’s hard to say. What I’ve said before is that if I had a magic wand when it first passed and I could have reversed the vote, I would have. Now if I had a magic wand I’d probably put it back in the drawer for a couple of years. I’d want to see more data. I’m not sure I’d vote for it yet.

But certainly the old system was a train wreck. So if I had a do-over — and I tell other governors this — I’d wait a couple of years. Let’s get more data in to see whether this thing really works.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in the Colorado State Capitol. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

What data do you want to see? What do you need to know before you declare legalization an unqualified success?

I’d like a couple more years on teenage use, just to make sure. I’d also like more data on overall usage. And they’re finally beginning to do scientific experiments. The fact that we don’t have good data on the effects of prolonged high-THC marijuana use — what it does to your long-term memory — that is, to me, very frustrating.

If no state was willing to take the first step, though, we’d never get these answers.

That’s fair. Louis Brandeis was the first to say the states are laboratories of democracy. This is a classic example.

Has being the governor in charge of recreational legalization made it harder to talk to your son about pot?

No. If anything, it’s been easier. I bet I don’t go two weeks without having a discussion with him. He’s in ninth grade now, so he just went into one of the big public high schools here in Denver. Within three weeks of being there, somebody offered to sell him some pot. He came back and told me and I said, “Well, you didn’t buy it, did you?” And he laughed and went, “Dad, you’re so square. Of course I didn’t buy it. You’re the governor. I can’t do that.”

He’s politically aware.

[Laughs] Well, it’s politically aware, but really what he meant is that he’s heard about it so much that it wasn’t even something that he’d considered. And he said that none of his friends had even considered it. It’s not something any of them are looking forward to experimenting with.

Why not?

We spent a bunch of time and a bunch of money trying to market some of the risks of this high-THC marijuana to teenagers. We took the tax money and prioritized it toward the unintended consequences of legalization. This year we’ll spend $10 million on TV ads and radio ads and promotions.

When I was a kid, there was an old movie called Reefer Madness. It was hysterical, and by hysterical I don’t mean hysterically funny. They were so over the top in terms of what would happen if anyone ever dared to touch marijuana. So I graduated from high school in 1970. In my senior class, 95 percent of the kids had tried marijuana before they graduated — they did a poll.

Wow.

Now it was much, much weaker. They say it was one-sixth to one-eighth the intensity of the marijuana out there today. But it was pretty commonplace.

So it was kind of weird. Reefer Madness and all the hysteria that surrounded marijuana in the 1950s and earlier made us so cynical about the whole thing — and that lesson tempers how we market the risks to teenagers so that they’ll hear it.

Did your mother ever talk to you about marijuana?

She never talked to me about it in terms of “don’t use it, it’s dangerous.” She never said one thing or another. We did end up having discussions, though, because I tried it and she found a little bit in my room. Then we had a serious discussion. Her point was, “Listen, if you want to break the law, don’t do it in my house. You’re 18 years old, I can’t control everything you do. But I think you’re being stupid, and whatever you do, you can’t break the law in my house. It’s not fair.”

Did you listen to her?

She was exactly right, and I never did again.

But pot is something you experimented with when you were younger — just like 95 percent of your high school classmates?

Yeah, exactly.

What were your feelings about it before you became a politician?

I was aware that it was out there. I was always surprised … sometimes you’d be at someone’s house for dinner and someone would light up a joint after the meal. I was like, “Wow, I never thought they smoked pot!” [Laughs]

When you speak to families — parents, kids, husbands, wives — what do they tell you about legalization and how it’s affecting them?

It’s all over the map. There are some parents who still, no matter what the data says, they think it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to the state and that their kids are at risk — unreasonable risk. And I tell them, “Talk to any teenager. Before it was legalized, any kid who wanted it could get it cheap.” And they go, “Not like it is now.” And I say, “That’s not what the data says.” But people feel that way.

A lot of people are still worried about their employees. But it’s just like drinking. Drinking is legal, but you can’t come in drunk. Same with marijuana — you can’t smoke it at work, you can’t come in high. If it affects your work, your boss has the right to fire you.

Do families seem to be registering any of the positive impacts?

There are people who are engaged in the community — especially civic-minded people — who welcome the change because the old war on drugs was such a failure. We were sending so many low-income kids to prison, giving them a felony on their record. That was the wrong way.

The son of a friend of mine interviewed me for a school project about two years ago. He was 17. Afterwards I asked him, “Do you think it’s more likely that your friends will try marijuana, use marijuana, now that it’s legal?”

And he looked at me and smiled, and said, “Are you kidding? Drug dealers don’t care who they sell it to, so we could always get marijuana. If you guys tax it right and figure out how to get rid of the black market, the drug dealers, then you’ll actually make it harder for us kids to get access to it.”

Was your friend’s son right?

We have some anecdotal evidence that there are fewer drug dealers on the street. Which makes sense. They estimated that marijuana was 40 to 50 percent of the drug trade. If you take 40 to 50 percent of any retail sales product out of circulation, you’re not going to be able to support the same number of distributors. I had never really thought about that.

Donald Trump recently said, “They’ve got a lot of problems going on right now in Colorado, some big problems.” It sounds like you think Trump is wrong.

He is. Every state has problems. The big problems are the ones you don’t know how to deal with.

How have you dealt with the problems that have arisen from legalization?

In most cases, the things we should have worried about more, we’ve been able to come back and legislate.

A friend, his 12-year-old kid was at a movie, went into the restroom, and some other kid offered him a gummy bear infused with marijuana for $5. That’s just not right. That’s the kind of stuff we didn’t anticipate.

But since then we’ve really come down on it. Now you cannot infuse anything that looks like candy — anything that looks like it’s meant for kids. No little gummy bears, no animals, no faces, none of that.

Like most states, we have caregiver rules that allow people to grow marijuana if they’re providing it to people for medical reasons. Our original law allowed these caregivers to grow up to 99 plants. Ninety-nine plants? You’re a factory. That’s not a caregiver. So this year we cut it back to 12 plants.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in the Colorado State Capitol on April 4, 2017. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

What challenges remain? There are two bills working their way through the Colorado Legislature right now, one allowing home delivery and one allowing pot clubs. Where do you draw the line?

We knew there would be a large group of people with a self-interest in continuing to normalize pot use. I personally think it’s too early to be delivering marijuana, especially because of Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions’ clear opposition to recreational marijuana. I’ve been saying, “Hey, let’s just take a deep breath here.”

What about the pot clubs?

There’s a possibility some people will interpret them the wrong way, as somehow making pot easier for kids to get. I don’t see that great a risk there. That horse is out of that barn.

A pot club, you’re not going to be able to smoke it. You can’t smoke anything. We have a statewide indoor health law. So at a pot club you can sit around and eat edibles. Big deal. They can do that right now.

The attorney general just ordered the Justice Department to review its policy on pot. What are you going to do if Sessions tries to crack down on marijuana in your state?

Well, you know, Amendment 64 passed 55 percent to 45 percent here. Polls show it’s over 60 percent approval now. I took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the state of Colorado. Our voters put marijuana into our Constitution. I don’t really have too much choice, the way I look at it.