Dick Summer Connection

Strange week. Two natural disasters and a natural wonder all in the same week. That’s why the blog and podcast were late. I was sitting in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair the other day, and I felt the earth move. Really. An earthquake. I’ve felt the earth move before, but never when my Lady Wonder Wench was in some other room. My Lady Wonder Wench frequently creates testosterone tsunamis which cause hormonal power surges in guys all over our zip code. It is very difficult for me to describe what Lady Wonder Wench looks like without using my hands

 She is the kind of woman who probably started the custom of lovers holding hands. I don’t think holding hands is only about a feeling of being connected, because I’m not the only guy who occasionally seems to lose control of his hands in the company of certain members of the soft voiced, dangerously curved, estrogen enriched among us. I have long suspected that women sometime hold hands with us, so they can have some control over what that hand is doing…especially when we’re in public, or she has a headache, or she’s experiencing an intense desire to watch a George Clooney movie in peace.

 There’s a story in the Night Connections 3 personal audio cd about hands. In fact, it’s called…”Hands.”Hands can be much more honest than words. You can always tell if a woman wants you to hold her hand. She holds your hand right back…or not. I love holding my Lady Wonder Wench’s hand. The Pimple People don’t understand that about my Lady Wonder Wench and me. They can’t believe that Louie-Louie Generation folks like us can have a hot, sexy romance. They haven’t figured out that a person in your arms is worth two on the I phone. If a Pimple Person’s girlfriend leaves him, he just downloads a new ap for his Iphone, has an extra beer, yawns, and shaves one leg, so when he goes to bed, it feels like she’s still there.

 “Hands” is from the Night Connections 3 personal audio cd. If you like it, you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the Night Connections 3 icon on the home page.

 My Lady Wonder Wench can eye kiss me from across a room with those blue eyes. She has a silky smile… sometimes sexy, sometimes just full of fun. She doesn’t wear lipstick any more…partially because she used to get uncomfortable when I watched her put it on. I thought it was funny.

 These days when I do something like that, I get a quick punch on the shoulder. But back when we were first going together, One day she caught a bad cold, so I figured I’d bring her some flowers, and make her a bowl of chicken soup. We’d had more than a few dates that went well, and a couple that went very well. So I didn’t think I’d have to call before I dropped in.  Therefore, I just rang her bell, and she answered the door…in her bathrobe and slippers with her hair up in curlers. I thought it was kind of nice, but it took her a week to stop blushing. And she has never used curlers since. And when she reads this blog, I’ll probably get a punch on both shoulders. With her new 68 pound handbag.

 She is the natural wonder in my life. I was doing some work around the house on Wednesday, and I found an old shirt of mine that I haven’t seen in years folded neatly on the top shelf of her closet. I asked her about it. She actually blushed, and she reminded me that a long time ago, we had to go our separate ways for a while. It was a lot of years ago…and it seems she had worn it to bed every night while we were apart. She said she pretended my arms were still in it, and that made her feel safe.

 Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

 1-    How come Hawaiian guys enjoy their weekends so much?

2-    What does Old Lyme Conn. have, that Washington D.C. must      never get ?

3-    Why will elephants never play MLB baseball ?

 Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

 The other natural disaster was the hurricane. An earthquake is like a drop dead great punch line. A hurricane is like a 500 page Tom Clancy novel. It takes a week till you know how the good guy beats the bad guys. Or IF the good guy beats the bad guys. You see a hurricane coming all the way across the Atlantic. The weather guys tease you about it. You try to guess who’s going to get hit…and sometimes it’s you.

 Unfortunately, sometimes the weather guys hype their story to the point where it seems like a work of fiction, and people treat it that way. “Evacuate? Hell no. Not me. I can ride it out…They don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s not going to be that bad.” And even more unfortunately, sometimes it is that bad. 

 I’m a pilot. We have to make go/no go weather decisions all the time. There’s an old pilot saying that goes: “Would you rather be stuck on the ground wishing you were up there having fun flying, or would you rather be up there flying wishing you were safe down on the ground?”

 I wasn’t taking any chances on that Natural Disaster with my Natural Wonder, Lady Wonder Wench. We have lots of beautiful trees on our property. Some of them are hanging right over our house.

So, I took her camping…at a nearby hotel… made of concrete and steel…with no trees over head…and room service…to ride it out. And let me tell you…there is a lot to be said for riding out a natural disaster in a hotel…with a natural Lady, like Wonder Wench.

Takeoff time. My Lady Wonder Wench has packed enough stuff for a voyage of exploration to the South Pole for our two night stay at a hotel. The outlying rain from Irene has started. Some of it pretty enthusiastic. We’re just west of Philly. Predictions call for the heaviest rain to begin around 6PM, the really nasty stuff between Midnight and 8AM, with the worst between 4AM and 6AM.

Lots of the family and friends in other parts of the country have checked in. Everybody’s ok so far.

No podcast this weekend.

This is probably sign off for a while, but I’ll let you know when we get back home.

As Jessie James, the great bank robber always said…”Stay Safe.”

It’s Friday, and My Lady Wonder Wench is picking up some last minute groceries. I just checked our generator, and it’s fueled up and ready to go. The lawn furniture is stashed in the garage. I’ve got to gas up the car and fill the five gallon portable gas tank we keep in the shed. We’ll spend tonight here at home.

We love this house. We’ve been here for sixteen years. We’ve got things as tied down as we can make them. Irene is due to hit us around 8 PM Saturday. There are some beautiful old trees hanging over the house, and the odds are that at least one of them won’t hold up under the hurricane winds. Not much I can do about that, except take My Lady, and some of our most important papers, and spend tomorrow night in that hotel I told you about. It’s about ten minutes from here…concrete and steel…no trees.

Figuring out, “What’s important” enough to take is a strange feeling. Even stranger is deciding what to leave behind…knowing that there is a very good chance that it won’t make it through the storm.

There’ll be no podcast this weekend. But I’ll do the best I can to keep you updated on this blog.

Please…if you’re anywhere near Irene…don’t take chances. The space between courage and stupidity is sometimes narrow. But there’s an old rule of thumb that pilots follow when it comes to making a go/no go decision on a flight. It goes like this: “Would you rather be down here wishing you were up there, or would you rather be up there wishing you were down here.” 

Stay safe. Big Louie keeps reminding me that there aren’t enough of us to be able to afford loosing you.

Some of the stupidest moments in human history often follow the statement: Hey…watch this ! Perhaps the stupidest statement I have EVER heard went clanging against my head, just minutes ago. I was discussing hurricane Irene with my friend Susan. She said some friends of hers were going to the shore this weekend. She told them it would be dangerous. One of them said…”IT WOULD BE AN ADVENTURE.”

No. IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLY STUPID !!!!!

Irene is no lady. She has a mean red eye, very, very bad breath, fierce fangs, and claws in her paws.

Lady Wonder Wench and I live on a lovely hill about 40 miles west of Philly. It is a beautiful place, with tall, elegant trees. Lots of tall elegant trees…with a full bloom of summer leaves…which will turn those trees into sails. Many of those trees are right over our house.

The last time we had a hurricane, it hit in the middle of the night. And one of those trees came crashing through our bedroom wall…just moments after we had run down into the basement.

I am making arrangements to spend the hours during which we are expecting a visit from Irene at a nearby hotel…made of concrete and steel…with a huge parking lot around it…and NO TREES.

That’s why there will probably be no podcast this weekend. But I will try to stay in touch with you via this blog.

Because I fly a small airplane…sometimes in less than sunshine-y conditions…I get to see more of the dangerous effects of weather than most folks. You often hear about Coast Guard guys who fly specially equipped, “heavy metal” aircraft into a hurricane to check out what’s going on. You hear about it so often, that it probably sounds routine. But it’s not. Trust me on this…every one of those guys is a hero.

There is a time and a place for heroism. But not for incredible stupidity.

Stay safe.

I have lived through innumerable hurricanes (grew up in Millis, Mass. and loved it when there was no school–no electricity) and a few tornadoes (got a hot tub out of one…long story) and of course a whole host of huge thunder storms.  But this was my first … and I hope last … earthquake. 

 All right, so the earth can move pretty spectacularly when love (lust) is at its best.  But the entire floor and the desk and my computer and ME ?  Now that I did not like.

 I figured at first that my Louie-Louie Lad had done something rather weird downstairs in his office.  It happened right underneath me.  Only lasted a couple of seconds at the most.  But it sure did feel … strange.

 Our neighbor Randy was preparing to climb onto his roof and was moving around a lot, so he felt nothing. 

 And Dick thought I had done something … like fall down … and he came rushing upstairs to help. 

 I know, I know, some of you are saying:  “Pshaw, what do you know about a real earthquake?”  Well, boys and girls, this thing made the news so I was not hallucinating.  Please, Big Louie, if you have a whisper in someone’s ear, please ask for this to not happen again.

 I didn’t like it at all.

 And now we have a hurricane to worry about … and how can we eat crabs at the airport during a storm?  There’s supposed to be a big crab-eating party at our little airport on Sunday. I love crabs … but could we please ease off on the heavy weather?  Even I will find it difficult to chase crab legs around a plate if the world is bouncing all over the place!

I’m just sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room, listening to the soft, Summer, night creatures. In fact I just recorded them. They’re so…calm. And I need to calm down sometimes. Everybody does. I think I’ll have some fun with the recording too. We’ll be having some folks over for New Year’s eve again this year, and I think I’ll put the Summer night creatures sound on the stereo while Dick Clark is bouncing the ball in Times Square. I like watching my friends brains spin a little. It must tickle. Because it makes them giggle. And giggles are good for calming down.

 The smart guys in the white lab coats say that these Summer night creature sounds are made by the little dude male bugs rubbing their back legs together to attract their little foxy lady bugs…much like you see at your neighborhood singles bar on a Friday night. But listen to that sound. Are you telling me that all that sound is made by some little one ounce bug ? He’d have to be one heck of a stud bug. Seems to me that to make all that noise, you’d need at least a hundred pound cricket, and excuse me, Jimminy Cricket fans, but a hundred pound cricket is just an ugly thought. My Lady Wonder Wench says that if you kill a cricket in the house, a woman will get pregnant. I killed one in the house last night. I am watching carefully to see what kind of affect that has on Lady Wonder Wench. I have suggested to her that if she wants to get pregnant, and killing the cricket doesn’t work, I know of some alternate methods. 

 I am not a big bug fan. They bug me. There for a while in the sixties, chocolate covered ants were all the rage. Ants disguised as chocolate bars do not tempt my palate at all. Our kids liked to collect fireflies in jars. I’m from Brooklyn. There are no fireflies in Brooklyn. That’s either because they have been over collected through the years by lots and lots of Brooklyn kids, or because very little besides cement grows in Brooklyn. When our kids started collecting fire flies in jars, they always thought they looked so pretty in there. And they did. I always resisted the temptation to tell the kids that all living creatures have to breathe, and stuffing a fire fly into a jar was going to have serious side effects on the his ability to light up our lives in the very near future. I say his ability, because I think the flies that light up are males, trying to attract females. Again…just like in the singles bars.

 Why is it always the guys who have to attract the girls…except for certain odd exception guys…that we’ll just call the Clooney Crowd. Why is it that if a guy walks into a singles bar, rubs his back legs together, and asks ten women for a phone number, he’s going to strike out 9 out of ten times. If a woman walks into a singles bar and rubs her back legs together, she wouldn’t have time to ask for a phone number before 9 out of 10 guys were trying to light up her life.

 That’s one of the points I’ve always tried to make with my Men Are Saints Campaign. Men Are Saints…M. A. S. The Mas appeal. Consider for a moment that singles bar experience. A singles bar can be a dangerous place with all that testosterone sloshing around. So sometimes a saintly man will see an innocent looking young lovely woman, and in order to take her out of that dangerous environment, he will ask her up to the safety of his apartment. Is he ever praised for his thoughtfulness. Nooo. Nay sayers instead almost always attribute shockingly selfish motives to his chivalrous suggestions.

 Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast

1-      Past what government system might Neil Armstrong have tried to sneak a chunk of green cheese ?

2-      Name three items that cause the most boo-boos at home.

3-      What is the space age Viagra effect ?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

 Lots of my friends have too much on their minds these days. That’s one of the reasons I like to spin their brains a little and make them giggle. Stuff falls on our heads every day. It all seems like big stuff. Boulders. Rocks…cracking your cranium. But if you spin your brain a little…get a little calm, lots of times it turns out that they’re not really rocks falling on your head…they’re more like a bunch of pebbles. Nasty…really nasty sometimes, but not fatal. There’s a story about that in the Night Connections 2 personal audio cd. It’s called Not Again.

Been there…done that. My Lady Wonder Wench has had a lot of flowers on her table…a lot of times…because I spent lots of nights like that. It’s nasty. Really nasty. But if it’s happening to you right now, I’m here to tell you it’s really not fatal. If you like the story, you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the Night Connections 2 icon on the home page.

 I like spinning people brains a little. Because it must tickle. And I like to see them giggle. Giggles are good. Yesterday, I opened a window, looked up at the sky and smiled. My Lady Wonder Wench said, Why did you do that? ” I told her it was, “Because that satellite might be up there snapping pictures.” That’s what she gets for paying attention when I was rubbing my back legs together at the radio station where we both worked, all those years ago.

He saw tomorrow in that light … and I guess even a Louie-Louie Lad can get scared.  But I will tell him again … wherever he goes, I will go.  I made that decision so many years ago.

 We’ll march with those 76 trombones for a while yet … he’ll just have to wait for me, I am slower than I used to be.

“Time Marches On” But the parade stumbled this morning. It stumbled. And that shook me up. This gets a little strange, but bear with me, because it may happen to you some morning if you’re a member of the Louie-Louie Generation like I am. When I opened the curtain and looked out at our back yard like I do every morning, the sun was hitting the trees from a strange angle. It wasn’t the winter angle by any means. It didn’t even look like fall. But this morning, it wasn’t middle of the summer soft like it has been since early July. It was like something out of the “Twilight Zone.”

 My Lady Wonder Wench is the star of my own personal, “Today” show. Every morning when I wake up, I look across the pillow at her, and touch her cheek…hoping that she doesn’t disappear. Even after all this time, I still have to make sure that she’s really still there…that it wasn’t a just a dream that she ran off with me all those years ago. And it was a lot of years ago.

 It was all the way back when we had penny arcades, hula hoops, Chuck Berry, double features, candy on paper strips, cars with tail fins, penny loafers, and Superman comic books. For me, they were the hard working days of trying to become what I wanted to be. And then came the magical nights with her…learning that “For every man, there is one woman he can trust.” That’s a line out of her novel, “Love’s Forbidden Flame.” And it’s true.

 It doesn’t seem like it was such a long time ago. But time marches on. She had eyes that made June skies jealous back then…and long, soft, shining, dark brown hair, roller coaster curves, a voice that sounded like syrup pouring on pancakes, a wicked sense of humor, and a dream that had to do with writing a book, and riding horses. And she says…I was part of that dream too.

 And it WAS a dream, not just a fantasy. A fantasy is something you just love thinking about. A dream is something you love thinking about, but you’re also willing to do whatever you need to do, to make it come true. We’ve been living that dream for a long time now. Time marches on. It’s been a long, parade, with at least 76 trombones playing our favorite songs.

 It doesn’t seem so long ago that I could do 120 pushups all at once. It’s a struggle to do 60 now. But now is what I’ve got to work with now. I figure that doing only 60 instead of 120 doesn’t make me half the man I was. But if I let the fact that I can’t do 120 any more keep me from doing the 60 I can do…that’s what would cut me down to size. Time marches on. So I do my 60, then I just hitch a ride on the nearest float, and enjoy the music for the rest of the parade. The parade has wound around the block more than a few times for me.

 Some Pimple People claim that those of us who are members of the Louie-Louie Generation are living our second childhoods. Good. Children have energy, smarts, hopes and dreams. I say,“As long as we don’t over do it, a second childhood is fine with me.” I mean don’t have the dentist put braces on your dentures to fake it, but if somebody asks, “Do you still have super sex” why should you have to say, “I’ll take the soup.” Take a moment…think about it.

 Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.

1-    What musical question is answered by the fact that the busiest stork day in America is October 5 ?

2-    September has been declared, “Pleasure your mate month.” What am I looking forward to seeing as a result ?

3-    What kind of golfers prefer golf to sex ?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

 I remember when I started dreaming about having a sexy lady live with me. I was about 8 years old, and I finally figured out that Jeannie Cambell, who lived next door, wasn’t just a very soft boy. I’ve been a lucky guy. I’ve put my arms around a lot of dreams, that haven’t disappeared. There’s a story about that in the Lovin Touch personal audio cd. It’s called, “If It Weren’t For Dreams.”

 There’s a difference between a dream and a fantasy. And the difference is that you want a dream so much, you’re willing to do anything, pay any price, give up anything you have to give up…to put your arms around your dream…to keep and protect it…and grow it so it’s strong enough so you can reach out and touch it…and it doesn’t disappear. If you like “If It Weren’t For Dreams”  you can just keep the current podcast. Or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the lovin touch icon on the home page.

 Time marches on. But it seemed to stumble this morning. It was like something out of the twilight zone. The sun was hitting the trees from a different angle. It wasn’t the winter angle. And it didn’t look like fall. But it wasn’t middle of the summer soft like it has been since early July.

 I looked across the pillow, and she was still there this morning… looking so lovely in the early Summer light. I reached out to touch her face…and she didn’t disappear. She wasn’t just a dream I had so long ago. A dream I wanted so much, that I was willing to do anything, pay any price, give up anything I had to give up…to put my arms around her…to keep her… and protect her. I know that time marches on. But it seemed like the march stumbled for a moment this morning. And I really love our parade.

 Come on, trombones. Take it from the top. I know there can’t be any stragglers in Time’s Parade. But give me just one more time. At least one more time.

Now do you all see why I am so proud of my Louie-Louie Lad?

 Answer the damn question, Washington DC … just who do you think we are? What do you think we have become ?

 Besides America, the United States … we are US !  And try though they might, not even politicians can take that away from … you and me … us …

 Stop it, all of you.  Grow up.  Get a grip.  Is life a bitch?  Yup. Sometimes. Are things falling apart all around us?  Oh yeah. Some of them are. Can we fix things?  You bet.  WILL we?  Dunno, lads and lasses … but we have always tried … and won … and we had better get back to that kind of thinking.

 I don’t care what political leanings you have; just stop leaning so far that you’ll fall and break yourself.

A famous baseball player once said, “You gotta believe”  Do it.

I have some really great dreams. Sometimes they’re sexy, sometimes they’re full of happy memories, and sometimes they’re full of great ideas. Some of those ideas have turned my life around. That’s the way it is with great dreams. But I don’t think this is going to be one of those great dream nights. There’s a question that needs an answer in my life. And it’s really bothering me. It’s no secret. In fact there’s a very popular song about it.

 I’m a Louie-Louie Generation guy. And Louie-Louie Generation folks have been around long enough to know that if you’ve got the guts, and you’re willing to make the effort, and you get a little luck, sometimes, you can make even the best and biggest dreams come true.

 Let me tell you a true story about a great dream. Once upon a time, there was a lawyer by the name of Francis. Francis was pretty good at lawyer-ing. He was always looking one step ahead of the competition. Good lawyers do that. One night, he was pacing back and forth on the deck of a ship, trying to figure out how he was going to get a client released from prison. All of a sudden, there was a series of terrible explosions, and war rockets started screaming across the sky from a fort on a hill overlooking the harbor, and men started running in all directions trying to escape from the smoking, deadly, confusion of war.

 It was the beginning of a battle that lasted through most of the terrible night. And no one could know the outcome…until the early light of dawn…which is when Francis  grabbed a telescope, and pulled it out to focus on the flag on the fort. It was still there. Torn, full of bullet holes, and burnt…but still flying proud and sure, and free.

 You know the story of the Star Spangled Banner. It’s a song about a dream come true. A dream that a bunch of guys in wigs and funny hats had…a long time ago. The wigs and hats were the only funny things about those guys. They had guts, and energy, and determination And they also had a lot of arguments about some very basic points that they wanted in the document they were working on.

But as they were signing their names to the document, I think it was Ben Franklin who said something like, “We must either work together, or we will surely hang together.” They had guts. And they had pride. And energy. And strength. And in the long run…they cared much more about the dream they shared, than about their disagreements. As a matter of fact, as Ben said, they were willing to literally stick their necks out…to noose length if necessary… to make their dream come true.

 We’re dreamers, you and I…all of us…Americans. That’s how we got to the moon. We had the dream, and we made it happen. We dreamed about buildings that would scrape the sky, so we built  a sky scraper national park and called it New York City. All mankind has always dreamed of flying…and it was a couple of our guys by the name of Wright who made it happen.

 That song that Francis Scott Key wrote was about a dream that came true. But Francis Scott Key, the lawyer, was used to staying one step ahead of the competition, and he knew it wasn’t a completely done deal. He knew that like any dream, it would take effort, and guts and a little luck to keep it alive. And he wasn’t sure that would happen…which is why he ended his song with a question. A question that has…up until now…had a simple answer. And that answer has always been yes…until now. The question is, “Oh say does that star spangled banner still wave…o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave? A lot of people aren’t sure we can answer that question with a simple “yes” right now. I’m not one of them.

 There’s no question about the bravery of the people who put on our uniforms. Watch the TV newscasts. You can see the fire in the eyes of the Americans in our Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. And Coast Guard…we sometimes forget those guys and we shouldn’t. We have a volunteer fire department a few blocks from here. It protects my house. Those are my neighbors. They have the guts to put on their uniforms and run into buildings when everybody else is in a panic, running around in circles, and hollering “Help, help, the sky is falling.” Pride is their only pay. I had a buddy by the name of Bill, who wore his gold NYPD detective badge with such pride…and courage, until the bad guys got him.

 And my friend Wes…he wants desperately to put on his uniform…his hard hat…and go back to work building roads…and bridges…and buildings. He had his own small construction company for almost all his life. Mostly small town government contracts. Now he’s delivering pizzas, and desperately looking for a job working for some other guy’s construction company.

 And speaking of courage, how about a single mother we know by the name of Alice. She’s a private duty nurse. She works the over night shift. She’s also a graduate student, and of course…a mother. What a collection of jobs that is. Courage comes in different packages. There’s the kind of courage that helps a person face death. And just as important, there’s the kind of courage that it takes to face being dead tired…day after day and night after night…and like Alice…you just keep doing your job…because you’re determined to keep your dream alive.

 There are little dreams and big dreams. There’s the kind of dream that turns a “you and me,” into an “us.” And there’s the kind of dream that build the gutsy-est, free-est, most honorable nation on earth…the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 But the question at the end of the song is, “Are we still the home of the brave?” America owes a lot of money. The guys in the wigs and silly hats understood that problem. It was much worse then…relatively…than it is now…much worse. All those guys had was the energy, the determination, and the guts to make their dream work. And they did it. They built richest nation the world has ever seen…out of practically nothing. Nothing but faith, and honor…and guts.

 The pathetic political pigmies who sit where once Jefferson, and Franklin and Washington stood, are now are telling us to be afraid. Be afraid of China…where they ARE building sky scraper national parks. Six of the ten tallest buildings in the world are in China. Only one of that tallest ten is ours…the Willis Tower in Chicago. It’s number eight on the list. The tallest building in the world is going up in Saudi Arabia. It’s about twice as tall as our Willis Tower. When the guy in charge was asked why such a huge building was going up, he said, “We’re making a statement about who we are.”

 The guys with the wigs and silly hats were also making a statement. A statement about who we are, and who we could become. It had to do with that dream they cared about so much that they were willing to hang if necessary, to make it come true.

 George Washington’s pals said, “We hold these truths to be self evident.” The word from Washington now is, “You know those promises we made to our poor and our elderly? The ones they paid for with their taxes ? Well…we’re afraid we can’t keep them any more.” “Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free” has become, “Be afraid of those people. They don’t speak our language, and they want our stuff.” We’ve even changed, “We mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” to, “So what if we default on the full faith and credit of the United States. We’re afraid we mis-spoke when we said, ‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions shall not be questioned.” The guys in Philadelphia all those years ago said, “We’ve got nothing. Which means we’ve got nothing to lose. Charge ! Full speed ahead.” The guys in Washington now just run around in little circles crying, “The sky is falling. Let’s all go hide.”

 Big Louie, his own bad self, the Chief Mustard Cutter of my generation always says “Don’t complain about something that’s broken unless you figure out some way to fix it.” So ok. Here’s just one way to pay our bills. It’s just my way…maybe you’ve got something better in mind.

But here’s what I have in mind: Get Wes, and people like him working again. Lots of people say that, but here’s one way to actually do it. We slap a tax on every job that every big company ships over seas. If GE builds something in China, GE has to pay a tax that’s equal to what that job would pay in America. That will pay our bills pretty fast. It will also put Wes back to work. And watch how quickly our roads and bridges get fixed.

 And while you’re at it, how about we close all the tax loopholes in our Swiss cheese of a tax law. The word “Loophole” is a politically correct term for what is in reality just a legal scam. We don’t have to raise taxes. All we have to do is make the laws work the way they were intended to work in the first place, and collect the taxes we’ve already got on the books.

 Martin Luther King had an American dream. Wes does too. And Alice. And me. And Francis Scott Key… the guy who wrote that song that ended with the big question that’s keeping me from having great dreams these nights. Is America destined to be the land of the free and the home of the brave…forever ?…the greatest dream mankind has ever dared to dream ? Or will our American dream turn out to be just a moment out of…what might have been.

 I know this isn’t going to be one of my great dream nights. Not tonight. But I do believe that we still have the guts…and the determination… and the luck to keep the dream alive…forever. I still believe in us.