OPTIMISTS, TAKE HEART! Some Things Are Getting Better

         I was in the San Fernando Valley, 101 Freeway,  when it struck me: here I am, stuck in a sea of cars, and the air is bright and clear—no smog and not a Smoky Pierre in sight.      

Years ago, the air would have been dark orange, virtually unbreathable. Without fanfare, Detroit silently cooperated with the once-denigrated Air Quality Controllers, who persuaded engineers to create cars without toxic emissions. Ta Da! . . . suddenly we could all breathe again. While they were at it, automotive geniuses improved lights, brakes, and Miles Per Gallon, so we now slurp up half the gas of yesterday. My old Cad got 14 MPG. My Prius gets 39 and Rob’s 43—and it’s no longer news.

Look at our local buses—all running smogless on Compressed Natural Gas.

Remember the days when airplane air was polluted and you couldn’t entertain at home without ash trays?  And restaurants and sports events were stinky with smoke? Who ponders this anymore? Mostly no one. Because we seldom see any smokers.

            L.A. Times columnist, Sandy Banks, reports another victory:  300 Americans imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit have been freed--thanks to DNA. Unlike fingerprints and eyewitness testimony, DNA is reliable.

            Rob will violently disagree with this, and so will a lot of you, but I’m secretly glad that Congress is hitting investors with stealth taxes. People with money were never paying their fair share. And now, without fanfare, more of us are.

            Thank heavens for I-phones with cameras—and those photos of a few savage policemen. We now have evidence about brutality we never believed could happen. 

            How many of you know that California now gets 25% of its energy from non-fossil-fuel sources? Our own solar panels provide monthly gifts--electricity for free. I’ve seen more wind generators and solar panels sprout in the dessert . . . and it’s only getting better.  

            And how about newscasters who believe their viewers relish positive news? Two stations now end their broadcasts on a positive note:  “People Making a Difference,” and Steve Hartman’s “On the Road.”

                       

            One last thing: When, thirty years ago, did you ever see a father and son hugging each other?  Or for that matter, any other two men? Surely these guys have made the world a better place.

            

My humorous books available at Maralys.Com.  Or on Amazon.  

SHOW US YOUR PASSION--WE'LL GIVE YOU THE WORLD

SHOW US YOUR PASSION—WE’LL GIVE YOU THE WORLD

            I first saw him on Sixty Minutes—lawyer Bryan Stevenson in an abbreviated version of his appearance on the TV program, TED. It seems that Stevenson’s 18-minute talk on legal injustice inspired TED viewers to contribute over a million dollars to his Equal Justice Initiative. Yet Stevenson’s talk was not a plea for money—it was a passionate description of legal inequality in America, especially among blacks.  He said, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. It’s justice.”

            Stevenson’s appearance on TED was no accident. One of the producers said, “If we’re thinking about doing a story on somebody, we talk to them, and we try to look at a video of them to see if they have passion.”  As the show evolved, the producers realized that yes . . . they wanted the personal stories—PLUS the big idea.

            Passion is obvious in Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg, when he speaks of “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” or Jack Kennedy’s plea for Americans to “think what you can do for your country,” or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” all words replayed constantly.

But think of THIS YEAR—when Dan Price, owner of Gravity Payments in Seattle,  spoke about the passion of his employees . . . and after sleepless nights decided to reduce his salary 90% and the company profits, too, so he could significantly raise all his employees. His decision made a new kind of history. But more important, it brought Dan Price a special kind of happiness. He has since heard from 100 other CEOs who applaud his move.     

Or consider Nick Hanauer, among the richest businessmen in America, who said, “The pitchforks are coming . . . The idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base . . . When workers have more money, businesses have more customers.” On the back of his beliefs, he campaigned for a $15.00 minimum wage in Washington State. To his amazement, a year later it happened.

My intention was to write about what happens when I’m passionate. Here is a story so mundane it shouldn’t be included--but I’ll tell it anyway. I’ve gotten only three traffic tickets in my life. Each time I believed I was right and the policeman was wrong. (This is not to say I’ve never deserved a ticket. I have. Just not these.) 

Each time, I went to court to plead my case. As I sat watching other drivers turned down by various judges I wondered why I’d made the effort. Yet three times I believed so strongly in my own circumstances that—even with the policeman sitting right there—the judge ruled in my favor.

Over the years, passion has served me well. But this riff isn’t about me. It’s about how, in the end, passion carries the day. If you REALLY care about something, tell others. Tell the world. One passionate person is worth a thousand who don’t care enough to make a squeak.     

           

All my books are available on Maralys.com. (Or on Amazon).  I'm pretty passionate about most of them.

STAR BILLING I NEVER WANTED

STAR BILLING I NEVER WANTED

            For a small drone, the machine kicked up a mighty wind.  A few days ago, six of us sat mesmerized as it zoomed around my son’s family room like an angry hornet, lights flashing, four propellers creating a miniature hurricane, more breeze than anyone expected.

What I should have expected  was that eventually it would hit me. Like others, I kept ducking. Then . . . Clunk. The spinning, futuristic toy came to a sudden stop against my upper lip.  A nasty surprise.  And this from my son, Chris, who, in addition to being a surgeon is reputedly a good pilot.       

“But of course,” my husband muttered,  “it had to be you.” 

As Chris’ wife, Betty-Jo, handed me a damp towel for the few drops of blood the drone released, I suddenly remembered.  Oh, yeah . . .  I’ve got this history. 

Over the years I’ve noticed other people acquire reputations they relish. Whereas I’d like to be famous as a writer, around my family I’m known mainly as a target.   

It all started innocently enough, years ago, when I stood near a railing at Brandon’s ice hockey game. First grandson, first time I’d ever attended a game—and to add to my uncanny luck, other family members stood beside me. But only I was singled out by the puck that sailed skyward off the ice, cleared the railing and smacked my upper arm. It hurt like crazy. Still, I felt lucky. It could have been my head. It was Chris, standing next to me, who noted, “Of course, Mom, you were the one that got nailed.” How he recognized this tendency so early is difficult to imagine. But let’s just say his observation was predictive of future events.

Once another grandson, Dane, became fully invested in volleyball, Rob and I attended most of his matches. The Anaheim Sports Arena contains some twenty volleyball courts. Unlike other spectators, I’ve been hit by balls flying out of at least ten of them. Balls from courts behind me clunk against the net and find my back. Balls from warm-up smashes in front of me careen off my forehead. Balls from near-empty courts seek me out as I head for the cafeteria--and one managed to knock off my glasses. For that matter, my glasses alone have taken hits and flown off my face at least three times.

Other spectators began to notice. “You do seem to have a bulls eye painted on your body,” a team mother said. Her husband added, “You know, Maralys, you really need to wear a helmet.” Another mother said, “Don’t sit by her—she gets hit every time.”

Once, in the Anaheim arena, as I was headed for the Ladies Room, a ball from a nearby court followed me down a narrow hall and brushed me as I entered the rest room.

The most spectacular moment actually occurred in a high school gymnasium. Like other spectators, I was sitting quietly in the bleachers when it happened. A volleyball from the court in front of us sailed down the length of the gymnasium, hit a wall at the far end and rebounded, flying like a homing pigeon straight for my head. Dozens of other heads were available, of course, but obviously none qualified.

My family finds all this amusing, as though it’s somehow my fault. They weren’t surprised when we were walking together across a soccer field and an errant ball bounced off my ankle. But even our guffawing males didn’t witness the ultimate in heat-seeking missiles.     

That came when, with my granddaughter Christy up in Oakland, I visited a tiny tots birthday party. Like grasshoppers, some dozen three-year-olds cavorted and frolicked across a modest living room, chasing small toys and piñata candies. Among the objects on the floor was a tiny ball. To my astonishment, a miniature boy took a mighty swing with his miniature toe, caught the ball just right, and sent it cascading into my cheek.  

The father sitting beside me exclaimed, “Oh!  Are you all right?” 

He probably didn’t believe me when I said, “Well, that was certainly the smallest of my assailants. You wouldn’t know this, of course, but I’m famous for getting hit by flying balls. In fact, I’m verging on a national reputation.”   

We both laughed.

At the time I thought the little boy had achieved top billing. But that was before Chris brought home a drone. While I admire him as a pilot, when it comes to flying a drone, he’s a menace. But for me a high point. What he did with his newest toy was add a star to my celebrity as a target.         

HORROR IN THE COCKPIT

    

HORROR IN THE COCKPIT

We know so little about that crash in the French Alps. Yet what few details have come out suggest scenarios we can hardly bear to contemplate.  In fact, it seems that a lot of future aviation may be at stake. 

I first heard about the accident in a strange way. My granddaughter, whose husband is currently getting his MBA in Barcelona, e-mailed me Tuesday morning: “Mike’s professor’s family was on that plane that crashed today. His school is cancelled Friday.”   

            I stared at her e-mail.  What plane? I wondered. What crash? 

Only by backing up my e-mails did I find it—news that hours earlier a plane from Barcelona to Dusseldorf had gone down, with no survivors expected. Even the earliest reports were baffling: no pilot had radioed the tower; no distress call was ever received.

Years ago I wrote a book about airplane sabotage, a techno-thriller called “Scatterpath.”  What made it fascinating to me were the revelations made by the NTSB investigator with whom I worked closely for three years.  Among them was the explanation that U.S. pilots are given assertiveness training so that no co-pilot would be dominated by his superior . . . that everyone in the cockpit would feel free to speak up in case of impending disaster. In fact, the Korean plane crash in San Francisco was made worse by the fear of an Asian co-pilot (maybe two) to warn his “superior” that the plane was coming in too low.  As we all learned, the plane hit a sea wall before it crash-landed.

Today’s revelations were startling at first—then chilling.  One of the two pilots, having left the cockpit at top cruising altitude, couldn’t get back in. The voice recorder revealed that even after he knocked politely, then harder, then tried to break the door down, no answer came from inside. No voice was heard. Was the remaining pilot incapacitated?  Had he locked the door accidentally? Was he unable to admit the man on the outside? 

Was this truly an accident?   

But tonight an expert pilot interviewed on television assured the public that all pilots have a code to punch for re-entering the cockpit. Only by continuous, energetic override from the inside, he said, could the outsider be kept out. 

As of Wednesday night, this is all we know:  no pilot radioed the tower. The second pilot tried and seemingly failed to get back inside his cockpit. With a probable “code” available for readmission . . . what actually happened to keep him out?          

            As a writer, I couldn’t have dreamed up such a set of bizarre circumstances—a scenario that ended so badly.   

            Now we all want to know:  who WERE these two pilots? And what motivated one of them to refuse admittance to the other? Was the inside man really trying to bring down a plane? 

Shortly we will probably know a great deal more than we do now. Thank heavens for “black boxes.”  Which, as most of you know, are really orange.      

“Scatterpath” is available on my website:  Maralys.com

A WORD THAT DEFINES SUCCESS

A WORD THAT DEFINES SUCCESS

           

            I first heard the word on a TV program called TED. Not sure what the acronym stands for, but that night the topic was Education. Each speaker was given 7 minutes, but the one that impressed me most was a teacher-turned-psychologist. She and a few others studied schools and teachers everywhere, trying to discover the one quality in students that made them succeed.  They watched, they observed, they photographed.

            And who did best?

            She said it wasn’t the kids whose IQs were highest. It wasn’t the kids who had the greatest social skills. Or the ones who were the best looking. It was the kids with GRIT. She said it was the kids who persevered, who went for the marathon, not the sprint. The kids who just kept at it, who wouldn’t quit, who persisted no matter what the odds against them. The kids who were willing to take an hour and a half bus ride to get to a good school.

            She kept asking, How do we give our kids this quality? How do we install GRIT? 

            And I was thinking, in a way, about me, because I’m not the smartest writer out there, nor the most creative. And maybe I don’t write the best books, either. But I don’t quit. I don’t give up. Those 14 years I was trying to get HIGHER THAN EAGLES published, I just kept re-writing.  I told myself constantly, If I make this good enough, someone will HAVE to buy it. I stopped counting the rejections for that now-successful book—there were just too many.

            So this is what I’m going to tell my writing students next class. If you want to succeed in this writing game you have to push on. You don’t need to be the smartest or the wittiest or the most creative—you just have to be the most determined. You must absolutely decide that you’ll make it.  And then march ahead relentlessly--re-write your work until it sparkles, look behind walls to find publishers, decide you will never give up. In your head the operative word should never be “If.”  Only “when.”  Eventually you’ll find that you had what it took. All along you had GRIT.     

“Higher Than Eagles” available, autographed, at Maralys.com

Or e-book and paperback at Amazon. 

CAN WE LIVE A LOT LONGER?

CAN WE LIVE A LOT LONGER?

            The baby appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, (February 3), with the caption: “This baby could live to be 142 years old.”  Since they picked the world’s cutest little guy, most of us would vote to let him live indefinitely.    

     The article is pages and pages long, but what came through like a mantra from on high was the value of exercise.  Second, perhaps, was attitude. Time says, “’You’re only as old as you feel’” may merely be part of the equation. Perhaps, within reason, you’re only as old as you bloody well choose to be.”  The article adds, “Research is mounting that your outlook, your personality and, frankly, how upbeat you are have a profound impact not just on how you feel but also on how your cells age.”

            I started this blog intent on a different aspect of health.  Food.  It was the baby who got me off track.

As some of you know, I’m working on a book with surgeon John West. Titled, “WHAT I'D TELL MY DAUGHTER: A Breast Care Surgeon’s Advice to the Women in His Life,” Dr. West chose an early chapter to discuss the importance of lifestyle in preventing breast cancer. He too, stresses exercise.  And rejects sugar.  

But then he quotes an astonishing 30-year study of 200,000 people . . . an attempt to link certain foods to longevity. Now Dr. West asks his patients, “What food do you think is most important to help you live longer?”  

So here I’m asking all of you. What food to you think it is?

Like Dr. West’s patients, I would have said broccoli.  Also like his patients, I would have been wrong.

The answer is nuts.

Apparently, the more nuts we eat the better—and any kind will do. Furthermore, the nut eaters tended to be slimmer than everyone else.   Meaning nuts are not as fattening as we think.

The minute I typed that chapter, I began starting my days with a handful of nuts and seeds. (A neat little trail mix package from Vons).  I also give them to Rob.  Is it my imagination that various aches and pains have subsided?

The nuts are easy.  Harder for me is giving up sugar.  But I’m trying. I’m trying.

I’ll let you know in a few months how this all works out. 

"The Tail on my Mother's Kite" -- available autographed at Maralys.com

or Amazon, e-book or paper copy.

BIG HEARTS IN TEXAS

            The high school boys in Texas’ Gainesville Correctional Facility, The Tornados, didn’t get out much.  In fact, it was only as a reward for good behavior that the boys were allowed to leave at all, and then only to play basketball against some private Texas schools.

            It was Steve Hartman who found them “On The Road.”  The Gainesville boys told him, “Our fan base was close to zero. Nobody was allowed out to see us play. Nobody saw us, really, and nobody cared.” 

            But far away, something else was happening. Two young players from Vanguard Prep school in Waco, knew the Gainesville boys would soon be coming. Together, they grasped what seemed an unfair situation. “We aren’t going to play a team,” one of them said, “that has no fans and no supporters. It doesn’t seem right.”

            With their special brand of magic, before the arrival of the Gainesville team, the two Waco players organized their own fans, asking that half the audience cheer for the Gainesville boys. Taking it a step further, they found five girls and outfitted them in “Gainesville” uniforms, preparing them to organize cheers for the other team.

            As Hartman says, “That night the real game wasn’t on the court: it was in the stands.”

            To the astonishment of the Gainesville boys, who hadn’t seen it coming,

every basket they made was accompanied by enthusiastic whoops and yells. At times their fans leaped to their feet to urge them on. The five girls led special cheers. The Gainesville boys were likely playing to sounds they’d never heard  before.  

Amazed and overwhelmed, the Gainesville guys played their hearts out. Afterwards one told Steve Hartman, “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.” Another said, “It’s something I won’t forget.” And another, If I live to be 70, I’ll never forget this.”

As Hartman summed up the night, “Nobody cared who won. So we don’t care, either.”

Later, the two Vanguard boys voiced their own thoughts. “This is how sports should be.”

My memoir,  "The Tail on My Mother's Kite," available, autographed, at Maralys.com. Also available, e-book or paperback, on Amazon.