Crazy Talk
I was prepared to talk about a spate of attacks on female joggers this week, all of whom had one thing in common: they were wearing earbuds and didn't hear their attacker come up from behind them (this according to KUSI last night).
But then I had something else happen today that I thought was worth sharing.
I worked at an event for San Diego County seniors to promote health and wellness. Its keynote speaker was a well known actor who lives in San Diego. You'd know him from movies like "Jaws" (one of my all-time favorite films), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "Mr. Holland's Opus."
Allow me to run down some of the things he told the audience:
--He's agnostic, but he believes that we all have a moral code that we should follow. Then he asked by a show of hands who was a divorce attorney and who worked in the housing industry. Once people responded, he asked if they regret how many lives they've destroyed. He asked this more than once.
--Wellness is about never disrespecting yourself, nor surrounding yourself with people who claim to be experts when they are not. He specifically mentioned those working on Wall Street, who claimed to know how to make people money and then essentially lost that money while somehow making more of their own.
--I'm going to paraphrase for brevity's sake, but here's how he described the world we now live in: "It's as if we are standing on a street corner in New York City and every day someone comes up to us and socks us with a wet bag of feces. And finally one day we say enough and call the police. And we get arrested for disturbing the peace, while the assailant gets off clean."
--Wellness, he said repeatedly, is about balance and justice.
--Then the speech shifted to describing a home renovation that apparently went horribly wrong and to which he is still very, very upset. He invited specific media outlets (none of whom were there) to come to his home and see the shoddy work done. No one in the audience , though, was allowed on his property.
Needless to say it was a peculiar speech, and ended with a call to restore civic lessons to schools because they need to know their grandparents are selling them out. What made this statement all the more interesting (to me, anyway) was just before this speech, someone from AARP had urged those grandparents in the audience to demand government entitlements they've been promised - which is why there may be nothing left for future generations.
But then I had something else happen today that I thought was worth sharing.
I worked at an event for San Diego County seniors to promote health and wellness. Its keynote speaker was a well known actor who lives in San Diego. You'd know him from movies like "Jaws" (one of my all-time favorite films), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "Mr. Holland's Opus."
Allow me to run down some of the things he told the audience:
--He's agnostic, but he believes that we all have a moral code that we should follow. Then he asked by a show of hands who was a divorce attorney and who worked in the housing industry. Once people responded, he asked if they regret how many lives they've destroyed. He asked this more than once.
--Wellness is about never disrespecting yourself, nor surrounding yourself with people who claim to be experts when they are not. He specifically mentioned those working on Wall Street, who claimed to know how to make people money and then essentially lost that money while somehow making more of their own.
--I'm going to paraphrase for brevity's sake, but here's how he described the world we now live in: "It's as if we are standing on a street corner in New York City and every day someone comes up to us and socks us with a wet bag of feces. And finally one day we say enough and call the police. And we get arrested for disturbing the peace, while the assailant gets off clean."
--Wellness, he said repeatedly, is about balance and justice.
--Then the speech shifted to describing a home renovation that apparently went horribly wrong and to which he is still very, very upset. He invited specific media outlets (none of whom were there) to come to his home and see the shoddy work done. No one in the audience , though, was allowed on his property.
Needless to say it was a peculiar speech, and ended with a call to restore civic lessons to schools because they need to know their grandparents are selling them out. What made this statement all the more interesting (to me, anyway) was just before this speech, someone from AARP had urged those grandparents in the audience to demand government entitlements they've been promised - which is why there may be nothing left for future generations.
