Archive for November, 2006

The Dick Summer (re) Connection – Chapter 22

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

Silent Night is THE number one Christmas song. But Jingle Bells is the song you hear most often on the All Christmas Music stations. Most of the commercials use it for production music. Which is interesting because it’s not really about Christmas. It’s about people having fun together during a sleigh ride. Lots of people say Christmas isn’t about Christmas anymore. They’ve got a point. The shopping has gone nuts. We’ve got kids looking for a reindeer with a red nose in the night instead of the Star of Bethlehem. And worst of all, deeply religious people are killing each other over who best knows God’s way to bring peace to the world. Definitely not what a loving Creator would have had in mind.So what IS Christmas, if it’s not about Christmas ?

The Salvation Army volunteers are out again this year, some of them bravely blowing trumpets right into the winter wind, others just ringing a little bell and smiling. They don’t do it for pay. They do it for Christmas. For some people that Salvation Army Volunteer’s smile is the only smile they’ll see on a real person that day. And one winter a long time ago, the Salvation Army rescued Christmas for a little girl who grew up to be my lady Wonder Wench. Thank you for that, Christmas, what ever you are.

My Dad was a church Choir Master in Brooklyn. He had 40 men and more than 50 women in his choir. He always had people of different backgrounds sing a carol from their “Old Country.” “The Carol of the Bells” from Russia, “What Child is This” from England. The only time I ever saw my proud German Grandfather cry was one Christmas Eve when Dad had the choir sing the second verse of Silent Night in German. “Stille Nacht.” Thank you, Christmas.

Dad took his whole choir caroling all round the neighborhood every year on the week before Christmas. Whole blocks full of people would gather around the choir and sing along…Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans and Atheists. They all sang. And smiled. And wished each other well. Thank you, Christmas.

The Pope and his priests, including my Cousin Damian, will pray for peace. As will the Preachers, and the Rabbis, and good people every where. A couple of people by the name of Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffel are taking a different approach. They’re trying to get everybody in the world to make love for peace on December 22, the first night of Winter. Lots of people are laughing at Donna and Paul, and some people are shocked … shocked I tell you, and possibly even incensed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people tried to have them arrested for promoting immorality. Donna and Paul will be called a couple of publicity seeking nuts. But I think they’re on to something.

I was talking to my lady Wonder Wench about this, trying to set up a date for December 22. She said it won’t work. I said not if we don’t try it. She gave me one of those wifey smiles with a quick eye roll toward heaven and a very long sigh. But think about it. Suppose every day we all had to promise to make love at least once. Every-body in the world. Given a choice between going to war and killing a lot of people, or spending your time making love, which would you pick?

I like the idea. I think it beats sending more troops to enforce the peace. And it would probably be slightly more successful.

Suppose there was a law that said before any country could declare war, the leader and all the people in his country would have to spend 40 days and 40 nights making love. 40 days and 40 nights is a nice number I picked out of the bible. Make it three months if you want complete separation of church and state. I’ll guarantee you there would be no wars, because everybody would be in a complete state of happy exhaustion. Not a bad description for world peace.

Wonder Wench is probably right, though. It won’t work. Think about it. We’re so hung up on sex that there’s a whole multi-billion-dollar phone sex industry in America. I think it’s kind of pathetic that we can’t talk about sex except over the phone to people we don’t know. Some pompous hypocrite actually got elected a few weeks ago, basically by claiming that his opponent posted “dirty pictures” of beautiful naked women on the Internet. I say, when the Creator made beautiful women, He outdid Himself. And He created them naked.

The people who say Christmas isn’t about Christmas anymore have a point. I think Christmas has become much more than Christ’s birthday. Christmas happened when all those people gathered together to sing with Dad’s choir all those years ago…the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the Pagans and the Atheists. I don’t think all those people standing in the cold Brooklyn night singing were really thinking about Christ. They were thinking about each other. They were enjoying singing, keeping each other warm, and enjoying each other’s company. Seems like a good way to thank a Creator for His gift of life.

My mother’s father left his home in Germany shortly before World War II. He saw Hitler coming, and wasn’t having any part of what that meant. “Stille Nacht” brought him home for a moment. His tears were bitter sweet. That’s the way it is sometimes when you go home …only for a moment. But it’s always good to go home. Even for a moment. I’ll thank you for him, Christmas. He was a good, loving, hard, proud man. I remember that his Christmas tree had real candles one year.

If Christmas is magical enough to include Christ’s birthday party, Santa Claus and a reindeer with a red nose, wide screen tvs, and jingle bells, maybe it’s magical enough to even include Pagans again. Magic is a Pagan tradition. That’s where we got the Christmas Tree and the Yule Log. If you’re a Pagan, you’ll recognize Donna and Paul’s idea of making love on the first night of winter as part of a ritual that was sacred before any religion we’ll celebrate this Christmas even existed. One of our daughters and a couple of close friends are Pagans. I hope…and pray…that Christmas really isn’t just about Christmas anymore.

Wonder Wench and I have been a laughing, crying, happy, hurt, hot and healthy faithful team for a long time. Thank you Christmas, maybe most of all for her. Magic is just as important to her now as it was to that little girl so long ago.

The people who say Christmas isn’t about Christmas any more are right. It’s Rudolph, and Santa, and Silent Night. It’s going home for a moment, and singing, and keeping each other warm, and making magic safe for a little girl. It touches something that was old long before there was a religion. Thank you Christmas.

 

Dick’s Details Quiz – the answers to these questions are all in the current PodProgram:

1- Before 1859 baseball umpires didn’t crouch behind the catcher. Where did they go to call balls and strikes ?

2- What nasty activity should test tube babies avoid ?

3- How do we know exactly where 1% of American teenagers are when it’s very warm ?

4- What should the Wendy’s restaurants serve, and they don’t ?

Scoring: 4 right – You’ll have a date on December 22.

3 right – You’ll have an ugly date on December 22.

2 right – You’ve been pre-selected for a date on December 22.

1 right – Your date will have a headache on December 22.

0 right – You won’t have a date, but you will have a headache on December 22.

IF YOU’D LIKE TO BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL WHEN THIS BLOG IS UPDATED, PLEASE CLICK ON THE PLACE INDICATED AT THE UPPER RIGHT SIDE OF THIS EDITION. IT’S FREE, AND YOU CAN UN-SUBSCRIBE JUST AS SIMPLY, ANYTIME YOU LIKE.

 

The Dick Summer (re) Connection – Chapter 21

Sunday, November 19th, 2006

The Dick Summer (re) Connection – Chapter 21 

THIS JUST IN: My thanks to Pete Falconi and his staff at WODS-FM in Boston. Pete has just added the the “Good Night” PodProgram that goes with this blog to the WODS-FM Station Web Page. WODS-FM is one of the nation’s top radio stations. Having spent a lot of years with my lady Wonder Wench in Boston, this is very special news to me. Thanks, Pete.

 

“Never say Never, Mr. Bond…” as they’re saying at the movies again these days. Good advice, which like most of the good advice I’ve been given in my life, I simply ignored. There is a slight chance that I may have to eat the “never again” that I’ve been telling people for years now…as in “I’ll never do radio again.” There are just a few guys in radio for whom I have some respect. Two of them came to me with an idea last week, and I really like it. It’s a long way from becoming a deal, but we’re going to talk about it in a week or so. This is the first time I’ve been excited about radio in a long time, and I was thinking that’s a real shame.  

I was one of those hide- the-radio-under-the-pillow-at-night kids. I’m from Brooklyn, so it was mostly WNEW in New York for me. That was such a gathering of mind picture painters… Art Ford, William B. Williams, Gene Klavan, Dee Finch, Teddy Brown, Jim Lowe, and Jazzbeaux Collins. Over at WOR it was Jean Shepard, and it was Bill Cullen at WNBC. As Proud PodProgram Participant “Angela From Brooklyn” so wonderfully put it…”So much magic from just that little box.” But the magic has been leaking out of the box for some time now. Even New York Mets play-by-play radio word wizard Gary Cohen has gone to cable tv.

If you follow radio stuff, you know that Media Monster Clear Channel has been sold in a something like twenty billion dollar deal. That’s B as in Billion. Those guys are brilliant business people…and they’re media murderers. They’re not the only ones of course, but they’re the King Kongs. They got into radio-tv when the time was right, squeezed every golden egg out of the goose, and now they’re cutting and running just before the Thanksgiving hatchet falls. That’s the Wall- Street- Big- Picture perspective.

Those of us who are former radio-under-the-pillow-kids remember much smaller pictures. The ones that poured out of the magic box… just for us. And those of us who got to live in the magic box for a while have such amazing memories. For me, the Christmas Eve WBZ bonfire on Boston Common; the WNBC 1976 tall ships broadcast from the top of the World Trade Towers; “Make it or Break It” from the drive-in parking lot at WIBC; Phillis Diller guesting with me on WISH-TV and WCPO-TV…. And a few of us who lived in the box have even more personal memories…”Softly As I Leave You” for a listener who didn’t want the audience to know she was literally dying as I played it for her; a live phone call from a listener that ended abruptly as a wave swept his beach home away in a hurricane; small stories…poems… in the middle of the night for Wonder Wench…half hidden in the static… hundreds of miles away… when I wasn’t supposed to love her; “Silent Night” played by the scruffy, unknown, blind kid with the guitar who dropped by my show unannounced at 5AM…he became well known as Jose Feliciano. We lucky ones who lived in the box have such memories.

The kind of radio and tv we knew is almost over now. “To everything there is a season” says The Book. That’s ok, because that’s the way it has to be. You’re already making new memories with me on this blog, and on the “Good Night” PodProgram that goes with it. New artists who would have been ignored in “the old days” are getting their share of the spotlight on You Tube, and I Tunes, and that’s good. Ordinary people with just a microphone plugged into a computer are becoming international stars, just talking about the reality of their everyday lives. That’s mostly good too. Camera phones connected to the Internet are covering almost every inch of the planet for all news cable networks. And that’s not only good, it’s awesome.

The Clear Channel Monster falls. The magic box is in splinters. But “To Everything There Is A Season. In just a few weeks, I’ll let you know if I’ll “never say never” again.

The Dick’s Details Quiz – (Click here to find the answers to these questions in the current “Good Night” PodProgram.)

1- Johnson is the most popular surname in the United States. But where does Smith beat Johnson for popularity ?

2- Why did Albert Einstein’s hair always look like he stuck a wet toe in a hot socket ?

3- What “trash talk” do you hear from 80% of American Men ?

4- Statistics claim that 6,000 American teenagers lose their virginity every day. Why is that impossible ?

Scoring:

4 right – Bingo.

3 right – Checkers.

2 right – Scissors Cuts Paper.

1 right – Tick Tack Toe.

Nun Right – Whack…right on the fingers with a ruler.

There’s a new “click here” invitation starting this week. If you click on the place indicated on the top right hand side of this blog, you’ll be automatically notified by Email when this (re) Connection is updated. Any time you want the notification removed, there will always be an easy removal clicker available. I hope you’ll join us.

 

 

The Dick Summer (re) Connection – Chapter 20

Sunday, November 12th, 2006

This is about an “Oooops,” a “smudge,” and stepping into a bucket of nails.There are “Ooops” moments in every life. Simple ones like forgetting the next line of a poem you were supposed to memorize in the fifth grade; more complicated ones like forgetting the name of the person with whom you find yourself in bed; and really big ones, like when Saddam looked out of his hole and saw a guy wearing a US Army helmet looking back. I had one of the more complicated “Ooops” moments in my life when Mel Phillips was appointed Program Director at WNBC. Some years before that, as the fickle finger of fate would have it, Mel was the Program Director at top 40 giant WRKO in Boston…and I was the Program Director of top 40 giant WMEX in Boston. Cutting to the chase, Mel beat my brains in as a Program Director. It wasn’t even close. And now he was my boss at WNBC. Fortunately for me, there really was no Ooops at all, because Mel was a complete pro, and we got along very well. That was more than a few years ago now.A few months ago, I noticed that Mel had a blog of his own, and I dropped him a note. We corresponded a few times, and we decided to swap links to our web sites. In the process, I found out that Mel used to listen to me on WBZ when he got off his air shift at WNOR in Norfolk. Mel and I went at it hot and heavy when we were competitors in Boston, and we sweated it out together as team mates in New York. But we never really discussed the past while we were at WNBC, and I was genuinely curious how he felt about it. So I thought it would be kicks to send him an invitation to comment here on my Blog, about his memories of the time. Here’s his reply:—————————————————————————————————————————Dick, Thanks for your kind comments. I’ve always been a big believer in learning by listening. When I listened to your show I picked up things that I was able to customize into something I could use on the air. I think more people would gain by doing a better job of listening rather than thinking about what they’re about to say in response. Whether you’re reading a book, engaged in a conversation, watching TV or a movie or listening to the radio, there is always something to be learned. So I would advise people to listen and learn.When we were competitive in Boston I always had a lot of respect for what you were doing at WMEX. In doing a scan of WRKO’s competition I not only monitored WMEX but WBCN and WBZ as well just to know what all the stations were doing so that no one was getting a jump on us competitively. When we were together at WNBC do you remember when I told you that I didn’t care about what happened in Boston ? My job was to get the best Dick Summer on the air possible. It was the same for Imus and everyone else on the air.I’m glad we’ve reconnected. I should have told you that story about listening to you on WBZ a long time ago. It meant as much to me then as it does to you now…——————————————————————————————————–Whatever else this story proves, I think it’s a good thing to remember that we’re all driving down the same road together. Sometimes we are the bugs, and sometimes we are the windshields. But we’ve got to get where we’re going no matter what kind of mess we make in the process.One of the tough but good memories from the days at WMEX were the fifty mile walks for hunger that were started by Father Pat Hughes. Father Pat had a soup kitchen going for homeless people in Boston. To support it, he held an annual “50 Mile March Against Hunger.” He walked into my office one day and said, “how would you like to join us?” I was still outrageously young and “strong like ox,” so I couldn’t think of a single reason to say no. The deal was simple. People would donate a certain amount of money for every mile you walked. The money went to the soup kitchen. We promoted the walk flat out to the wall for a couple of weeks, and we got a lot of walkers involved. I figured I ought to put my puppies where my mouth was flapping, so I went walking with everybody else.My lady Wonder Wench drove the station’s mobile unit, and stayed pretty much with me, although that meant driving slower and slower as the day went along. Fifty miles is at least three times the distance from here to Mars when you’re walking. At about ten miles to go, it felt like every step was into a bucket full of nails. Just as we got to the last block, a couple of guys came up to me and said they’d chip in $100 if I’d run the last block. They said it right in front of W. Wench, so there was no way I could weasel out. That was PAIN. It took me the better part of a month to get a regular pair of shoes on again after that walk. But it was one of those things you’re kinda glad you did.Foot note about Father Pat. He fell in love with one of the nuns in his parish. They asked for permission to get married. Of course they were denied. So Pat and his lady sadly left the church where they had both given so much of their blood, sweat and love “to God’s work.” Pat continued to work among the poor as a lay person. Along the way, he stirred up the top brass at some very big sugar companies with a series of lectures he gave on working conditions on their plantations. Pat was a jock athlete, in top physical condition. He was found dead in his bed at the age of 41. No reasonable explanation has ever been given. Rest in peace, my friend.   PODPROGRAM QUIZ – (You’ll find the answers to these questions in the current PodProgram. Just click here or on the PodProgram icon at the right side of the top of the page to listen.)

1- What are the chances of meeting a real live woman with Barbie Doll’s measurements scaled up to human size ? (36-18-33)

2- How large is the average meteor that crashes into the earth ?

3- How many toilet seat related injuries are treated at hospitals on an average day ?

4- What’s the market value of the chemicals in an average woman’s body ?

Scoring: 4 right – Splendid. 3 right – Semi Splendid. 2 right – Double Dose your Ginko. 1 right – Oooops. 0 right – Better listen to the PodProgram again.  

 

WHAT I WANT TO DO WHEN I GROW UP: I WANT TO LEAVE A SMUDGE. I know I’ll never change the course of world history, but I’d like to at least leave a little smudge to show that I was here. We live in an increasingly uptight, uncomfortable, unconnected, and lonely world, and I ‘ve got a small quick and easy fix for that. It’s called “The Dick Summer Connection.”

The thing I loved best about being on the radio was sitting in a quiet dark studio and talking into a microphone attached to a radio belonging to a woman who had just come through a jaw buster of a day…and hearing her tears stop, her breathing calm down, and maybe even getting the beginnings of a giggle going….or giving a guy a quick verbal punch on the shoulder by telling him a bad joke, letting him know it’s ok for a little while at least to forget the fist in the gut he’s been feeling all day. That’s a “Connection.” And it’s done with just a voice. The words weren’t important. It was the sound that made the Connection work.

HERE’S WHERE YOU COME IN. Everybody…you included… can create a Connection every day/night. You don’t need a great voice. You just need to know how to use your voice carefully, and to have the motivation to make the effort to do it. Most people don’t bother much with their voices. But think about it: THAT’S YOUR SOUND. It’s as important as your appearance ! You get a haircut/hairdo to look nice, you use deodorant so you don’t smell too bad, you take care of your skin so it’s nice to touch you…but when is the last time you thought about how you sound? If I can get you to sound as good as you look and smell and feel, and multiply you by the other 90,000 people reading this, (yes that’s the latest number we have for hits per month on this blog) we’ll actually make a real difference in the way we live, there’ll be a lot more kissing, hugging and other participatory sports, and I’ll be doing something that’ll leave a little smudge.

There’s a good example of a non connected voice that most of you have probably heard. When you dial a wrong number you get a recorded message. The message is simple and to the point. “We’re sorry but your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and try again.” But the woman who recorded the message sounds like she is absolutely furious that someone as stupid as me would have the nerve to misuse her equipment and waste her time. That’s not what the words said, but that’s what the sound in her voice said. I know it’s just a recording, but I really resent it. And that kind of thing happens to all of us, every day. We screw up both our business and personal relationships because the sound in our voices isn’t connecting with what we’re feeling, and the words we’re saying.

“Connection” can come from the sound in any human voice. Bill Clinton has it. Hillary Clinton doesn’t. I’ve been working on mine. I think you can actually get the feeling of a comfortable back rub in the cut from the Quiet Hands Personal Audio cd in the current PodProgram. That’s a Connection sound. I think there’s a “Connection” sound in the “Tiny Dancer” story in the Night Connections album. (I’ll run that cut on the next PodProgram, or you can listen to it right now by clicking on the CD Baby icon.) In fact I think there’s a “Connection” sound in all the cds on this site. And that’s what gives them their value. The “Connection” sound in a human voice telling a simple story can give the person who’s listening a couple minutes of real comfort and companionship. And I think that’s a big deal.

If you agree, help me spread the word about the “Dick Summer Connection,” by working at it yourself. You don’t need a great voice to make this work. Just fix how you use the voice you have. It’ll take some practice, but the practice can be fun. Here’s a quickie trainer: say the words “I love you,” out loud, the way you said it to your5th grade girl/boy friend. Now say it as if you

were talking to Catherine Z. Jones/Will Smith. Say it the way it might sound in a moment of passion. How would it sound if you were saying it sarcastically ? Are those words saying the same thing the sound of your voice is saying in all those different situations ? If not, go back and try it again, till you get your voice to sound “Connected.” Have some fun with this. Play a game of sound charade. Give people a list of the names of the people you’re thinking about when you say “I love you” all those different ways, and let them guess which one you’re thinking about when you say the words. Have some fun with this. Get your friends together and have a competition for who can say it most convincingly to George Bush. It’s a first step in getting you to pay as much attention to your voice as you do to your hairstyle, or the perfume you’re wearing.

 

It’s just a start, but it’s a good one. I don’t know if you’ll do it or not, but if you do, please let me know,and tell me how it turns out…my Email is dick@dicksummer.com  … If enough of you are interested, I’ll give you some more ideas to help youconnect with your voice in the next blog. And if all 90,000 of you do it this month, a lot of you will begin to sound as good as you look and feel and smell. (Maybe better.) There will be a noticeable increase in hugging, kissing and other such activities, and a comparable decrease in center finger flipping. And I will be on my way to making my little smudge, so people will know I was around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dick Summer (re) Connection Chapter 19

Sunday, November 5th, 2006

The Dick Summer (re) Connection – Chapter 19

Lots of you sent very nice notes about the Allison Steele article last time. Thank you. Yes, she was quite a lady. Kinda doubt if there will ever be anybody quite like her.

CAUTION – There will be a few “Adult” references in the following discussion. “Adult” in this case means not for Aunt Tilly. (Although I bet if Aunt Tilly thought nobody was watching, she might take a quick peek.)

There are a few real lessons you have to learn to survive for any length of time on the air. One of them goes something like this: You’re going to screw up sometimes, right on mic/camera, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s human nature. When it happens, the best thing to do is just forget about it and keep on going. If you forget it, so will the audience. The security of the Free World doesn’t depend on anything you say anyway. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll get fired. And that’s going to happen eventually anyway. Some people never learn that lesson.

Back in my tv days, there was an announcer we’ll call Gene. (Because that was really his name. No protection for the innocent here.) Gene was an easy going, super nice guy, with one of those voices that every boy tries to grow, as soon as he starts en-pimple-ating, so he can whisper really neat ideas into his girl’s ear. When Gene said “Hi,” every woman within ear shot answered, “Yes, yes, yes, whatever you want.” Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Gene was a “booth announcer.” That’s the guy who does the station breaks between programs and does any live on-camera commercials that need to be done…preferably in a voice that makes every woman within ear shot…well, you understand. Gene was a very experienced and very professional announcer. But he had one VERY bad habit. Every time he “kicked” a word, he’d repeat that word until he got it right. He didn’t “kick” words very often, but when he did, it was always the same routine. It didn’t matter much most of the time. It made his delivery a little choppy, but it was never a big deal until he won an audition to do live commercials for Arrow Shirts. It was a very competitive audition. Lots of guys wanted that highly prestigious account.

Gene was a tall, slim, nice looking guy, and Arrow Shirts figured they had a winner. And they did…except for that one VERY bad habit. And it struck the very first night Gene did an Arrow Shirts commercial live on the 6pm news. Since it was the first night for the big new account, the agency people, the client’s people, the station program people and even the General Manager were all crowded into the control room to watch Gene’s first performance. I had just finished my TV Dance Party show, and I hung out in the control room to watch the big debut. Gene was carefully made up, one golden lock of hair devilishly dangling on his forehead, suit jacket pressed to “stun,” and finely chiseled features turned to just the right camera angle.

The red camera light came on, the floor guy cued Gene. Gene flashed his famous smile and said in that wonderful, slightly suggestive bass rumble that originated somewhere down deep in his shorts… “Tonight’s 6 PM news is presented by Arrow shits. SHITS. SHITS. SHITS. SHITS.” At about the sixth repetition of the offending word, the switcher regained enough use of his index finger to reach up from where he had fallen to the floor laughing, to push the button and take poor Gene off the air. TV was so much more fun when it was live.

Sometimes you don’t even have to say anything to get into trouble when you’re on the air live. After I got fired at WTMX in Chicago, I had a show on a radio network which had a bunch of small southern stations for affiliates. It was a talk show. But even on a talk show there are short instrumental musical segments known as “bumpers” which help the local stations to cut away for their commercials and then return to the network feed. If their timing is a little off, they can fade the music up to make the transition smooth. I like all kinds of music except rap, but jazz Tenor Sax is probably my favorite. So my first night on the new network, I used lots of cuts from my favorite Sil Austin album for the “bumpers.” Bright and early the next morning, the network program director was on the phone…screaming…”you lost half our affiliates with that dirty music you were playing.” You really can’t make this stuff up. Aunt Tilly’s Little Old Ladies In Sneakers For Violent Action Committee Holy Hotshots were convinced that the lyrics of anything that sounded like the stuff I was playing must have reeked with SEX. And as everyone knows, all Bible Belts are kept securely fastened at all times, therefore there is no sex allowed south of Nashville, Tenn. Does the entire region depend on Virgin Birth for its population renewal ?

UNCALLED FOR OBSERVATION: Hit a nerve with my comment about God last time. Lots of Emails. ( www.DickSummer.com ) To clarify: You bet I believe in God. But I’ve lost all faith in all religions, including the one in which I was raised. I think God is MUCH too big to fit in ANY book. So I no longer try to “do His work.” I’m convinced that He’s perfectly capable of doing it Himself. So now I just try to do my own work. I like making people feel comfortable and cared for. Which of course includes respecting other people’s feelings about their religion. What do you like doing ?

Here’s an interesting answer from Proud Podcast Participant Big Jim from Saugus:

Glad to hear someone being “Up-Front” about breasts. I always find it amazing that our society is totally fixated on bazooms, the larger the better. We are besieged with cleavage wherever we look, sales ads, movie and TV promos and programs, and plastic surgeons are more than willing to install dual Mount Everests on any female who is eager and has the $$$$. Yet, let one enterprising young mother whip one of those suckers out in public and commence feeding a young infant, all hell breaks loose. Tons of smutty crap may be dumped on us regularly and it is tolerated without as much as a whimper, but the sight of the back of a little tot’s cranium nestled softly against his natural God given source of proper nutrition sends people screaming out into the streets.
Speaking of God:…You Bonehead!!! You state that we’re just getting in HIS way when we try to help.
First of all, CAVEMAN,who ever told you that God is a male??? The world we live in is totally screwed up and is run universally by males. I’m figuring that if God has a gender, it is probably female.
Secondly, life is not a chess game controlled by God. We are here for a purpose. Ever hear of “FREE WILL”?? The choices mankind makes have a huge and direct impact on our daily lives and our collective future. If for one minute I believed that God controls everything on this plane and that I didn’t have a chance to change things for the better, I would start playing Russian Roulette with every chamber filled. If God has been running everything in this world, the Great One definitely hasn’t achieved his GED yet. Our help has become nesessary and needed now, more than ever. I heartily suggest that you don a lightning-proof helmit!!! Jim.
More about this next time. If you’d like to join the discussion, just drop a note into the “comments” section of this blog, or send a note to www.dick@dicksummer.com

Special note from Glenn (Long Island)…Hi Dick,
I loved your piece on Alison Steele. Her warmth and wisdom breathed beyond the radio dial. I recall a time she aided a friend of mine after his mom committed suicide. Her words of comfort helped him carry on and enabled him to live on as one of the kindest, happiest souls I’ve ever met.

TAKE CONTROL PATROL: Lesson learned as a small plane pilot: The first thing to do when you get scared is…nothing. Then after you’ve done nothing for an instant, take a deep breath. It’ll calm you down enough to THINK. Thinking is good when you’ve got a problem. Doing stuff first and THEN thinking when you’re flying a plane causes lots of sudden stops and loud noises. Same could be said for facing a crisis at work, or looking up at some big nasty guy carrying a monkey wrench in a dark alley at 3AM. (How come you were fooling around in a dark alley at 3AM in the first place ?)

FUN PODPROGRAM QUIZ:

Click here to find the answers to these questions in the “Dick’s Details” part of the current PodProgram.

1- Which is the only continent that has never been the site of a war?
2- What does everybody do every two to ten seconds?
3- How many messages do your senses send to your brain every second?
4- According to Dick’s Details research, about how often will you blow your nose this year ?

Your comments, thoughts, suggestions or contributions of $100,000 or more should be sent to: Dick@DickSummer.com

Next time: WHY I’M REALLY DOING THIS.
(more…)