Category: Advice And Opinion

How in the world did we manage to turn out to be a pretty successful generation when we didn’t have school lunches that were provided by the Federal Government? I assure you that the parents back then did not think anyone else was responsible for feeding their children. We lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bologna sandwiches, apples, cookies and a few other variations and we turned out to be a pretty strong generation. Now, we are paying taxes to provide not just lunch to students but breakfast and after school snacks!! What is going on? How did this happen? The government made inroads during the Great Depression when the government bought excess crops from farmers to help them and to feed poor children. Okay, who wouldn’t agree to that but over the years, just like any government endeavor, it grew and is now a monster. As tax payers we have the right to complain but sadly we become complacent and that is never good.

How did we manage with just one TV in the house and it was black and white. No color back then, folks. We never paid attention to that because our imagination saw the color. Plus, only three channels to choose from. It was a big deal when public TV gave us a forth channel. A good time was had by all when someone would be moving the rabbit ears around to try and get a better picture and the rest of the people in the room would be hollering out advice. I occasionally catch myself looking for something to watch, and that is a choice from hundreds of channels, and then I make the comment, accompanied by a heavy sigh, that there is nothing on. Yes, I have become a bit spoiled too. We managed back then because we were outside more with our friends or we read books.

I am as dependent on my cell phone as most people today and I wonder just how we managed with only one phone in the house. It was usually black and you often had to share the line with a neighbor. This was called a party line and trust me it was no party when you wanted to make a call and couldn’t because someone was talking and talking and wouldn’t hang up. We didn’t know where people were every minute of the day nor did we get regaled with pictures of everyone else’s lunches etc. during the day and we managed just fine. If you wanted to make a long distance call you had to dial the operator and explain where you wanted to call. She would then call you back when a line was free. It could be a couple of hours. Now, we can call all over the world from a phone the size of a pack of cards. The real problem as I see it is that people are too connected to their phones and don’t socialize with other people. Who hasn’t been to a restaurant lately and looked around to see tables full of people and they are looking at their phones and not each other? Technology should not take over our lives as life is far too short to allow that to happen.

How did we manage without ‘fast food?’ We ate the majority of our meals at home. In the summer time there were the hot dog and ice cream stands that were open for a couple of months but other than those the option to eat out was a restaurant and eating out was an occasional treat. I was raised in Tonawanda, New York. This is a city between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Our restaurants reflected the ethnic background of the citizens. We had a German, polish and Italian restaurants for the most part. On Fridays a lot of restaurants offered fish fries as there was a large Roman Catholic population and the Church at that time said you shouldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Fish fries were very popular and you found a lot of non-Catholics filling up the restaurants on Fridays along with Catholics. However, eating out was a treat and not a weekly event. Today the selection for fast food is varied but we must be cautious as I don’t know of any fast food that is really as nutritious as a home made meal.

How did we manage before Google? Today if you are chatting with someone and the question of when did John Wayne die comes up all you have to do is grab your smart phone and google the question. We actually had to wait until we could get to the library and check for the information. Now, random information, financial transactions, current news etc. are only a click away. Sadly, so is war. During W.W.II people had to wait a couple of days to hear about a battle on the radio and to see any coverage meant going to the movie theater where it was shown before the scheduled movie. In the 1960’s when Viet Nam flared up you could see the coverage the next day. Now, we can see battles practically as they are being fought. In my opinion it makes real war seem like a TV show or a movie instead of the reality of the horrors of war. Although a lot of aspects regarding getting information quickly are good this one particular issue I have negative feelings about.

How did we manage, as girls, when we could only wear skirts to school and the hem had to be below the knee! Now, keep in mind that I grew up in Western New York where the winters could be brutal. You could wear pants under the skirt to get to school and there they had to be taken off. That rule changed a year or so after I graduated. It was sensible to change the rule but then, like a lot of changes, it went down hill. I am happy that I don’t have children in public schools today because from what I can see it is now okay to come to school half naked. I don’t care what feminists say about temptation being a two way street blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is that teenage boys are not really fully human. They are basically hormones covered with skin and to see so much flesh is down right distracting when you are trying to get those young men to learn Chemistry or Algebra. Plus, what happened to teaching young women to have modesty? Very little is left to the imagination these days. I also see where the students are running the schools and everybody seems concerned about their feelings and their rights. Trust me when I tell you that nobody cared about our feelings or rights and again I want to emphasize that we turned out, for the most part, as a strong, successful generation.

Yes, we managed back then. We didn’t know we had it tough. You don’t miss what you never had. On the plus side we depended on each other more and appreciated what we did have. I don’t see much appreciation these days but I do see and hear a lot of people complaining that they don’t have the newest gadget and their lives won’t be fulfilled until they do have it. I have thought about this and I honestly don’t remember ever thinking, when I was young, that my life would be more fulfilled, in some manner, if I only had a new gadget. Seems to me we managed just fine back then but today, not so much.

I hear people my age constantly bemoaning that life was so much better during the “Good Old Days.” I think, “Really?” I believe this statement deserves some serious consideration because in my opinion this is partly true but certainly not totally true.

Let’s look at one aspect of the “Good Old Days.” Neighbors knew each other. In the evening people sat on their front porches or stoops and then went back and forth visiting and discussing their day. Everyone knew the names of everyone else’s children and no one threatened a lawsuit if a neighbor yelled at another neighbor’s child because they were doing something they shouldn’t. Sadly, because we have become such a litigious society people are afraid to get involved even if they see something dangerous and most people today don’t even know their neighbor’s names let alone their children’s names. My husband had been dead three months when I bumped into a neighbor at the mail box and she asked how he was doing since she hadn’t seen him on the porch in a while. I told her and she acted all upset but part of me wanted to tell her that when I was young the neighbor would have gone over to see how someone was, when they hadn’t seen them in a few days, and asked if there was anything they could do. Yes, in this case the ‘good old days’ win.

The Woman’s movement, in my never to be humble opinion, has done more to hurt women than to help them. It was started to assist women in being treated fairly in the work place and regarding domestic violence and now it is a left wing organization that only supports women with a leftist mentality. When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, over 50 years ago, I was working at a government office. I was told that once I started to show that I couldn’t work the front window because it wasn’t acceptable for the public to see a pregnant woman. That was ridiculous but it was the way it was and a lot of people fought to make working conditions for women fairer and better. If you were an abused wife, and didn’t have family to fall back on, well, unless you got lucky and got a sympathetic police officer and judge you were pretty much up a barrel so to speak. So, in these situations the ‘good old days’ weren’t so good.

When I was growing up the term civil rights was not a big part of our lexicon. Racial discrimination was rampant. I laugh when people tell me that since I grew up in the North I wouldn’t understand. Trust me it was just as bad up there as it was in the South. I think we can all agree that the country has improved since equality under the law is for people of all colors. Now, we just need to convince people to take advantage of the opportunities this great country gives to people and quit reliving our ugly past. So, once again, the ‘good old days’ don’t look so good.

I remember being terrified that the Russians would bomb us as we were in school and we wouldn’t be able to get home. Bomb drills were a part of our school routine. When I went to Russia I was stunned to meet people my age who told me they had had the same drills because they were told the American’s were coming. No one went anywhere and all that was accomplished was terrifying children. Now, it is violence of another kind in our schools. I could go on and on as to why I think students are coming to school with the intent to do harm to other students but the bottom line is we still have scared students. So, on this issue I think it is a wash regarding the ‘good old days.’

You hear people all the time talking about the high cost of products today. Yes, there was penny candy back in the ‘good old days’ but remember the average, yearly median income for a family in 1960 was $5600.00. Thanks to the GI Bill most people owned a home and the majority of homes had a stay at home mom. Now, many families have both people working and in many cases just to make ends meet and they bring home a whole lot more than $5600.00. I do want to point out one fact that many people don’t want to acknowledge. Back in the ‘good old days’ people didn’t have credit cards. They lived within their means. You didn’t need a Dave Ramsey like we do today. On the other hand we have a much broader selection of life styles to choose from because of technology today. People work in fields that didn’t exist 50 years ago. As a child I had never had a mango or a kiwi. Now thanks to refrigerated trucks I can have one any time I want to purchase one. No one I knew flew to Europe. To be honest no one I knew had flown anywhere. Today air travel is not only for the rich. On this issue I have to say the ‘good old days’ take second place although the ‘good old days’ were ahead regarding credit and money management.

I have mentioned couple of times about so many women working outside the home today. Looking back at the ‘good old days’ most women were at- home moms. Yes, that was nice but not for all families. There were families that had a mom who was frustrated that she couldn’t pursue the interest or talent that she possessed. She was expected to stay home. Anyone with even half a brain can attest to the important roles women have played in our economy over the past few decades. However I find it sad that today many woman want to stay home and raise their children and can’t. The reasons vary from having gotten caught up in the pursuit of bigger and better toys, being a single mom or maybe a ill husband. What ever the reason, what really makes me angry is the way working women look down at an at- home mom or how the at- home moms looks down at the working mom. Isn’t the Woman’s Movement supposed to encourage us to do what we want to do? Aren’t other women supposed to support and respect our decision? However, because of the inroads made, women can now pursue their interests. That is why many new discoveries in medicine and technology, to name just two fields, have been made by women and never would have if we had stayed in the mentality of the ‘good old days.’ So, in this regard I think the ‘good old days’ don’t look so good especially if you are a woman.

In the ‘good old days’ entertainment was made so that the entire family could watch the show or listen to the music together. I am not sure exactly when it happened, as it was insidious, but today entertainment is something that you really have to evaluate carefully. In the ‘good old days’ shows about families always had strong father figures not the inept fools that are on most shows today. In fact, the only exception that I can think of is Blue Bloods where Tom Selleck plays a patriarch who is a stable father figure with strong values and ethics and expects the same from the members of his family. It doesn’t help that we hear all the time that men aren’t important and that being a single mom is cool. After all, the sit com’s on TV promote that constantly. The promotion of sex with multiple partners, adultery etc. is rampant and our young people have to be reminded if they watch such shows that they do not reflect the reality of life. In this case the ‘good old days’ win hands down.

“If it feels good; do it” This was not an expression that you heard when I was growing up in the ‘good old days.’ It started to be part of the culture in the late 60’s when I was a teenager. In the ‘good old days’ you were taught to think of the ramifications of your actions. You were taught to be respectful of others and to hold police, fireman, clergy and military members in high regard. If a teacher was wrong on an issue you took it home and your parents checked it out. If it was matter of you being rude, well, that was taken care of at home. Today we have members of Congress actually saying that the police are the enemy of the people. Service men are made fun of for serving or called ‘baby killers.’ In California a law was just passed that said you can’t suspend a student for rude or disruptive behavior. I guess in California they don’t care that the student who wants to get an education can’t because of the disruptive students. We have a generation of parents telling their children nothing is their fault and that they are just victims. In the ‘good old days’ parents explained to their children that although they were special to them; they were not special in the scheme of the world. They were expected to work for what they wanted and to accept the consequences for bad choices. If you didn’t study for a test and got a failing grade no parent went charging down to the school to blame the teacher and demand the grade be fixed or that their “little darling” be allowed to redo the assignment. To make the situation even worse it seems today as though every other child is diagnosed with a learning disorder. This takes a way from the students who truly have one and just allows these other students and their parents to have one more excuse for their poor grades and actions. In the ‘good old days’ parents understood that their job was to prepare their children to become contributing members of society. Today I see parents setting their children up for failure and that is truly sad. In this case I believe the ‘good old days’ definitely come out on top and that we need to get back to that mentality.

We need to be realistic when we look back on how life was decades ago. We can certainly learn and grow from what was in the past but wearing rose colored glasses as we look back isn’t productive.

I always told my girls to be careful and to be alert whenever they left the house. Over the years the response became, “Yes, Mom, because the world needs more lerts.” We always laughed but I had gotten my admonition out and that was what I cared about. Well, I have been thinking lately and you know they are right. The world does need more lerts.

When I told my girls to be alert I was of course referring to when they were driving or when they were out and about. I always reminded them to listen to their “gut” feeling and if something didn’t seem right get away from it. Look around and know your surroundings especially when walking in a parking lot. Sound familiar? I bet most of you parents told your children, especially, your girls the same things. I think we all need to take this a step further and as adults we need to be “lerts” everyday.

We need to be a “lert” where our neighborhood is concerned. When I was growing up we knew our neighbors. Now, everyone is running hither, tither and nigh and barely know their own families let alone their neighbors. We need to be alert to this situation. We should know if a neighbor is sick or dies. Why, you ask, because that is what a community should do and our neighborhoods should be small communities. If what I just described is your neighborhood then I suggest thinking about having a neighborhood get together. Get neighbors onto a computer site where you can let people know if someone is ill, has something for sale or is looking for a service for example.

We definitely need to be “lerts” where our government is concerned. I mean this not just in regard to our Federal Government but local government too. If you aren’t aware of what your local government officials are doing then don’t be surprised if a porn shop opens on your corner. Go to your local community meetings and be alert to what they are planning. As for the federal level I can only suggest that you be wise in what news you listen to on a daily basis. Make sure they are telling you the facts and not their opinion. Research on your own the facts you are given. Be alert to the fact that some reporters have forgotten their role of giving the facts to the viewers and then letting them come to a conclusion.

We need to be “lerts” when it comes to a special breed of toxic people. These are people who try to pit one group of people against another just because their political views are different. I am a Conservative but I have friends who have a far more liberal view of the direction we should go as a nation but we are able to discuss things in a rational and kind manner. We are also able to joke about issues too and do it all with a respectful manner. I also “had” a friend who stopped any communication with me because I was a supporter of President Trump. Be alert to these people as they contribute nothing of value to our daily discourse or where we are going as a nation.

We need to be “lerts” when it comes to entertainment. The moral bar regarding what is funny has gotten so low it is dragging in the mud. There is a song that children in church often sing and it is, “Oh, Be Careful Little Eyes” and it goes on to say be careful little eyes what you see, ears what you hear, tongue what you say etc. I believe that we as adults need to be just as careful. I can be in my car listening to a song from my high school years, that I haven’t heard in decades, and the words come right back. Young people need to think about what songs they are absorbing because they might be in their car with their children or grandchildren one day and what words will they catch themselves singing out loud? Regarding comedy we need to remember that what we laugh at says a lot about our character. When I was young you could listen to a comedy routine with your children and parents and not worry. Be alert to what you are watching and absorbing but be twice as alert to what your children are exposed to in the entertainment world. Don’t be afraid to tell your children it is “no” because I said “no.” Sometimes they are too young to understand why and other times, well, it is as simple as, “because I am the parent and I set the rules.” Remember as long as people are willing to spend their money supporting these people they will continue to create their vulgar, anti-christian routines and songs.

We need to be a “lert” where technology is concerned especially video games. We have a generation of young people who are horribly stunted in the ability to interact with other humans because they have had computer games as their friends for so long. One psychologist recently stated that some students are so stunted that they can’t go to a basic job interview, after college, because of their lack of ability to have a one on one conversation. This is tragic! As parents we must be alert to signs that our child is spending too much time on technology and not in the real word. This is especially horrifying when you see children a young as five and six spending hours with a video for a friend and not outside with a real flesh and blood friend. Don’t get me started on the violent video games. I don’t believe that violent video games lead anyone to commit violence but I do believe it desensitizes our young people to the realities of violence and it isn’t mentally healthy.

I applaud all my “lert” friends as they charge out and try to make their world a little better one square mile at a time. And the next time you hear someone say, “Be alert!” smile and know that you are a “lert” everyday.

I just read that Lori Loughlin, the actress who along with her husband Mossimo Gianulli was charged in the college cheating scandal, does not understand why she is being charged. The article states that she feels there is nothing wrong with what she did as she has the means to do it and that any mother with the money would do it too. I don’t know which is more tragic. The fact that she doesn’t understand why what she did is wrong or that she figures all mothers have no ethics or values speaks volumes about her. She obviously doesn’t think it important to raise ethical human beings who will one day contribute in a positive way to their community.

I taught for 15 years and during that time I saw my share of “helicopter” parents who want to smooth the way for their children and who have taught their children that nothing is ever their fault. It was always the teacher’s fault or the book wasn’t clear or they never heard the directions (even tho’ everyone else in the class did) and I could go on and on. These parents set their children up for failure in life and I find that very sad. These are the adults who will not be able to function in a job because their boss doesn’t know what he is talking about or some other self-serving reason on the part of this now dysfunctional adult. How do you become a contributing member of society if you have never learned accountability, to respect authority, to work with others without getting all the glory and to understand that accomplishments in life take hard work over time? I salute the parents out there who fight everyday to stay on top of what their children are doing, despite their own busy schedules, as they work toward raising successful adults.

I don’t know how Lori or her husband were raised. Maybe this belief that they were special started way back or maybe they allowed money to corrupt them. Remember the Bible is clear. It is not money that is the root of all evil. It is LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. (1 Timothy 6:10) What matters now is that Lori Loughlin doesn’t see what was wrong with tying up two places on the crew team even though her daughters had never rowed. The fact that students who had worked hard over a long period of time to earn those spots and now wouldn’t get them meant nothing to her. This is a terrible reflection of her character. One student explained that she was up at 4:15 in the morning so she could be on the water a little after five in the morning for a two hour rowing work out before classes. To lose a spot to someone like Lori Loughlin’s daughter, who has never rowed, left a bitter taste in her mouth at the unfairness of it all.

We need to give more attention in the media to the students who despite various and often tragic circumstances are accepted to a college and then succeed after hard work and perseverance. Sometimes these students accomplish great things despite having less than ideal parents.

No, the world isn’t always fair and our young people need to learn that early and know that they can’t let that fact knock them off of their road to success. However, blatant acts like this need to be identified and prosecuted. Yes, these parents need to be taught a lesson. Fines won’t do it because they have money and it is what they figure will always keep them from paying for their intentional misdeeds. They need to see the inside of a prison and not just for a few weeks but for a decent amount of time so that others will think twice about trying to buy their or their children’s way into college.

I have no problem with the fact that someone with the money Lori and her husband have can buy many things. I don’t care. When they start to think they buy their way past people who have worked hard toward a goal then I care. There are certain playing fields that can not be corrupted by money or we will be become no better than a Banana Republic that sells all its positions to the highest bidder. People with money always carry influence and that is okay to a degree but this nation was built on the belief that hard work and a fair shot at your goal is all you need to be successful. As long as we, as a society, accept the fact that rich people get special privileges, when ever and where ever they want them, then this issue will never be resolved. And there in lies the problem.

In an article that I wrote a few months ago I talked about using the rear view mirror of your life to keep on track as you move forward and not to let it control you or block you from moving forward. I decided to take my own advice. After several friends told me I should get my own web site and even expand what I write about I prayed and thought about what they said and then decided to do it.

This was not an easy decision because computer dynamics are foreign to me. Fortunately, I have an awesome neighbor Marlon Bernard who worked with me and got me set up. I have always loved to write and wrote for different papers over the years. I have done some editing but writing is my first love.

Over the last few years my life revolved around my husband who had been ill for some time. When he died, despite the support of my incredible family, I felt like I was aimlessly wandering and it was a friend who told me it was time for me to find out what I wanted to do and just do it. Initially I gave my family all of the energy I could muster but as the months passed I found myself starting to think about what I wanted to do. I started my first blog and it has now become this web site. I hope it is successful and that can only become a reality if people read it and find it helpful. My goals are to bring smiles, let people know they are not alone in their feelings, give insight, guidance, advice, share my opinion and always to remind people that prayer is a powerful tool offered to us by an all powerful God!

Please take the time to check it out and please, please let me know what you think and if there is something you would like me to write about.