Will the Real Problem Please Stand Up?

You'd have to be living under a rock to have missed what is happening with the states' highest executive here in Illinois the last few weeks. Allegedly, we have Governor who is on audio recordings making statements about what he planned to do and what he planned not to do about filling a vacated US Senate seat here in Illinois. Interestingly enough the seat was made vacant because the current President-elect Barak Obama had to resign the seat in order to eventually take the office of President of the United States.

Now maybe i am just way too cynical but frankly, the whole affair is not all that shocking... not from the sense that it's not a big deal but rather this is one case in which i wonder if the electorate of Illinois is ultimately to blame. Not only that, but is it possible that while we (the people, the press and whomever else) wring our hands, call for impeachment and whatever else... our real problem, the real "enemy" so to speak isn't simply graft, greed or politics as usual... maybe the problem is us.

From not voting, to not caring, to not getting connected with our communities, perhaps the issue is us. It would seem that the threshold, the standard to serve in a public role has been lowered so significantly... we have so grown accustomed to excusing poor behavior... especially the poor behavior of those who have been entrusted with positions of leadership both public officials and private individuals... maybe the problem is really us.

It's ridiculous to think that our leaders are going to live up to a standard that the rest of us pretty much ignore as well... so while we point and wag our fingers, while we cluck our tongues in disgust... i wonder if each of us would do well to take a personal integrity and character inventory.

Do i think the governor of our state is as pure as the driven snow (which is piling up pretty fast outside my window right now)...hmmmm probably not. But one thing for sure, the problem is not all with the governor, i truly think the real problem... just maybe us.

My Christmas Story.....

Our family spent this past Saturday going to out to a Christmas tree farm...looking for the "perfect tree"... The weather did not cooperate... SURPRISE! But we finally did find "the tree"... Is it perfect? Probably not but for our family it will more than do the job! That trip out to Newark, IL got me thinking about Christmas growing up as a kid in the south suburbs of Chicago. i am telling you right now, we did some down right funny stuff at Christmas!

The big thing at our house was....
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS ARE ONLY OPENED ON CHRISTMAS DAY... PERIOD... END OF DISCUSSION... so we figured okay... if that's the rule we'll stay up all night until the stroke of midnight on Christmas eve and then those presents were ours! Er, wrong.... not until about 6 or 7 AM were we allowed to open presents... that was still okay... we'd wait!
The only problem was that as little kids it's real easy to misjudge the impact that trying to stay up for about 24 hours straight might have on your little body! So we (uh i mean, I) came up with a brilliant plan!

Growing up in Park Forest, my mom and her sisters over several years lived together which meant that we often had our cousins living in our home and vice versa. Anyway, one of my favorite cousins when i was a kid was my cousin, Chris. He was about two years younger than me but man he was a funny kid! It just so happened that one Christmas he and i made a decision to stay up together on Christmas eve until we were given the final "all clear" to open the presents. After talking about various methods that we might use i came up with a brilliant (and pretty funny plan). Since caffinated coffee was not on our list of desirable drinks, we settled on something else. In our home there would be various canned goods, (canned the "old-fashoined way... in jars) and often the empty jars were then reused for various things. My idea was that if one of us saw the other one falling asleep we were to take one of the jars and knock the other one on the head with it... what can i say... it worked in the cartoons!
Being the older of the two i didn't care what it took... i wasn't getting bonked on the head and sure enough, Chris began to fall asleep and i got the chance to hit him in the head with a canning jar... i don't know if it helped or not... but he did have a huge knot on his head the next morning which was the source of several angry questions about how we could be so stupid... but we laughed our selves silly about it.

Frankly i don't remember what we got that Christmas but that memory has stayed with me ever since and every single time i think about it, i laugh... i don't know if Chris laughs about it or not but knowing him, probably.

Change happens...

This past week we celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife's parents and with my Mom and something struck me in what could be a "throw away" moment... it happened in my mind while helping my wife's folks load up their car with all the stuff they brought with them from their home in Indiana and all the new stuff they bought on "black Friday" (i'm thinking with regard to a certain president-elect that day should have taken on an entirely different meaning this year ;)... anyway i had the strangest sensation at that moment... i realized...."Hmm, there may not be a whole lot more family events like this..."

Not because i don't love my in-laws or my Mom or because all we do is fight at family gatherings about religion, politics or this year's embarrassment-to-the-family-family member... but because everyone is getting "older"...

It seems a bit unreal to me that i have one son who is about to head off to college and another one who will probably do the same thing in just a couple more years after his brother... the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas will be different... it's hard to explain but it is profound.

My family is changing...

My in-laws and my Mom are growing older, Ruthie and i are growing older and get this... my children are well on their way to adulthood.... it's weird. It's one of those things where i think i should be like... happy.

And instead, i became all introspective and things....

Anyway, we had a good time, and tomorrow (Saturday) will go on what could be a last current "family configuration" trip to a tree farm and cut down our own Christmas tree... something Ruthie and i first did when we lived in Calgary... that tree cost us 5 bucks Canadian (in US currency about $2)... oh yeah it was a long time ago... i really need to be more careful about those "throw away" moments...