by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note.  If I'd been smart, I  would have met Shirley Temple Black  in Prague August 20, 1968. I was finishing up several exhilarating days in the  ancient capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the waning hours of what  was called "Prague Spring." These were the glorious days when Alexander  Dubcek, local henchman of the USSR, played Tennessee Williams, cat  on a hot tin roof.
 
 On the most memorable day of all, just before his arrest, Dubcek went onto  the great balcony of Hradcany Castle and made the graceful, long-suffering people  believe that liberty was at hand... and they screamed their support, their belief,  their hope that deliverance was nigh. I shouted, too, tears in my eyes (as  they are now) that better days were coming, and soon.

 But the subjugated nations of the Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact had other  ideas, which among so many consequences would have given me a place in  Ambassador-designate Shirley Temple Black's motorcade out of Prague  to safety. Thus was the great square before the castle, just a day ago alive  with flowers, sprayed with bullets. Where I had cheered, there were now  bodies. Where I had exulted with fervent patriots, liberty their  passion, there  was puddled blood and the acrid smell of death.

 By that point if I'd had a lick of sense, I should have been en route home,  or at the very least to Vienna compliments of the U.S. embassy. But I was  instead alone on the last train out of Prague, trapped at the Austrian border,  what "information" there was lurid, frightening, a whiff away from panic.

 Thus I never met Shirley Temple or personally witnessed the radiant smile that  helped us survive the most difficult of times, uplifting then, eternal now. How had  this most "girl next door" managed to charm and inspire us so, to our everlasting  gratitude and awe?

 Golden girl in the Golden State in the Golden Age of the movies.
 One thing distinguished Shirley Temple from the moment  of her birth in Santa  Monica, California, April 23,1928 and that is the fact that everything connected  with this entirely normal event was entirely normal and so things remained, even  at the dizzying height of her celebrity. She was the daughter of Gertrude Amelia  Temple (nee' Krieger), a housemaker and George Francis Temple, a modest  bank employee. The family was of English, German, and Dutch ancestry. She  had two brothers, George Francis, Jr. and John Stanley.

 Like so many star-struck mothers, Shirley's encouraged her infant daughter's  singing, dancing, and acting talents, and in September 1931 enrolled her  in Mrs. Meglin's Dance School in Los Angeles for fifty-cents a week  About this  time, her mother began styling Shirley's hair like that of silent fiIm star Mary  Pickford. Ultimately this "do" evolved into the celebrated 56 curls that were the  quintessence of "cute" and which in turn evolved into a multi-million dollar empire  on which the smiles never set.

 In 1932, this sunny, blissful child ,"bathed in love" as she said, was discovered by a  movie agent and chosen to appear in "Baby Burlesks" , a series of sexually suggestive  shorts in which children played all the roles parodying film stars.The 4- and 5-year olds  wore fancy adult costumes which ended at the waist. Below the waist, they wore  diapers with over-sized safety pins. It was smut in top hat and satin garter, coming  perilously close to ending the career of America's Little Princess before it even got  started. Shirley Temple plays Mae West, indeed!

 (Years later in her autobiography "Child Star", Temple reported that when any of the  two dozen or so children cast in "Baby Burlesks" misbehaved, they were locked in a  windowless sound box with only a block of ice on which to sit. Her laconic conclusion?  "So far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche." Nice. More  revealing was her final comment on this unsettling matter, "Its lesson of life was  profound and  unforgettable.Time is money. Wasted  time means wasted money  means trouble." This was exactly what the studios wanted  their "stars" to believe,  say, and do... Shirley Temple, pre-schooler, was their kind of gal, and  they were right.  Shirley never let them down.)

 1934, Hollywood "Stands Up And Cheers."

 It is easy to forget just how grim and frightening 1934 really was. So much had been  toppled and devastated by the Great Depression. The old verities, now twelve for a penny,  were challenged everywhere, scoffed at, derided, no longer venerated, no longer the  white hope of an expectant world.

 There was a lot more to fear than fear itself as every ism -- Nazism, Fascism,  Communism et al -- made its strenuous, plausible play for world domination. What  did the Great Republic offer in response? "People in the Depression wanted something to  cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog, Rin Tin Tin, and a little girl", Mrs. Temple  Black often said in her unadorned way as if these few words were sufficient to  explain her astonishing success.  But more explanation is necessary.

 Not since Joan of Arc (1412-1431) had a great nation staked its future on a girl, much  less one barely out of rompers like Shirley Temple. St. Joan,  Pucelle de France, went  forward with the sacred Oriflamme in her hand and the certainty of God's  favor.  By contrast, Shirley conquered the world with the famous ringlets, an unbeatable smile,  and the warmest possible embrace for... everyone! And this begins to explain what  happened next to her, to the nation, and to a world that loved her at once, whatever their  race, creed, sex, age, national origin or anything else.

 Nothing like it had ever happened before... and it made people everywhere feel good;  made them feel happy now and optimistic about what was to come, no matter how gloomy  the current situation. She brought hope, and hope was what we all needed, and urgently...

 One year, 8 films, just 6 years old.
 For all that they prattle on about creativity and art, the titans of Hollywood would give  their eye teeth for a film model guaranteed to coin money over and over again. In 1934  Temple became the Most Important Star by providing it. The model, first seen in "Stand  Up and Cheer, had predictable, interchangeable parts that produced predictable riches.

 A feisty young girl caught in a jam, no parents apparent, adventures galore, all ending in  hugs and kisses on the deck of the good ship Lollipop where the minions under 20th  Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck shouted "Mazel Tov!", and tap danced around the  lovable moppet who had given them all a "happy landing on a chocolate bar."

 Once proven, the Hollywood Magic Machine worked overtime to provide suitable  properties for their ultra bankable asset. Nineteen writers known as the Shirley  Temple Story Development team created 11 original stories and some adaptations  of the classics for her. They made hay with a will while the sun shined. It was good  for everyone, not least the titans themselves whose studios just managed to avoid  bankruptcy by standing on her girlish shoulders; one smash hit after another,  each one a more perfect rendering of the golden model than the one before.

 Everyone, but everyone went to the movies to see her in action. Here's what  President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to say about his main competitor for America's  attention, the child who was far more photographed than he was. "It is a splendid thing  that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of  a baby and forget his troubles."  Rarely has envy produced a more graceful compliment.  It was completely deserved.

 Needless to say, every element of a Shirley Temple  film was analyzed and  analyzed  again. What should she wear, what should she say, to whom should she say it,  how should she talk, sing, tap dance... each calculated decision contributing to her  image of naturalness, naivete and tomboyishness.

 The most controversial of these decisions involved the simple matter of Shirley holding  hands with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, a helluva hoofer who happened to be Black. After  prolonged discussion, loving everyone triumphed over loving some. Their effervescent  dance steps in the 4 films they made together dazzled audiences everywhere and helped  move segregated America in the right direction.

 All good things...

 Sadly this marvelous situation couldn't last, was in fact being undermined by  Shirley herself ever single day. Winsome child stars, you see, make the fatal mistake  to grow up... and they  are never as cute and cuddly when they are loutish teen-agers  as they had been. Bad habits materialize (Shirley became a chain smoker) and  adolescent sulking makes bad box office. Thus, as her age went up, her appeal went  down until, after one wake-up call after another, Shirley Temple tossed  in  the sponge  and announced her retirement. She was just 22. 

 Now what?

 What happened next defied logic, at least big studio logic.Unlike others of her  ilk Shirley didn't fall apart thanks to drugs and arrogance. Instead she remained  what she had always been been. For her the shibboleths of Main Street Middle  America were always her bedrock beliefs and guiding lights. What you saw was  utterly and completely who she was.

 And so what she did was what we all do... get married (at 16) and divorced (4 years  later)... only to find love and happiness for fifty-four years with San Francisco Bay  area businessman, Charles Alden Black, a man who claimed he never saw any of her  films. She had three children (one with John Agar, Jr., two with Black) , and they had the  usual problems.

 She went back to work; some projects succeeded, some didn't. There was no mystery,  no enigma, no hidden secrets waiting to be revealed in supermarket check out lines.  Instead there was decency, patriotism, kindness, courtesy, good humor and most of  all love, tolerance, and acceptance, each an attribute which helped make her the  effective diplomat she became, for her embassy to the Czech Republic and its  playwright president Vaclav Havel, was no sinecure. She wouldn't have taken the job  if it had been, for she always valued and extolled the importance of hard work and did  more than her share. She might so easily have turned out so very different...

 Envoi.

 I didn't have to think twice about the music for this article. It was "On the Good Ship  Lollipop", Shirley Temple's signature song. Music by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Sidney  Clare, it was published in 1934, then used in "Bright Eyes." Over 500,000 copies  of the sheet music were sold and on any given night in that year of worry and anxiety,  families gathered 'round the piano to find uplift in its lively beat and happy lyrics. Thus  she shed her grace on we. Wherever she was going, she wanted us all to go... and  I, for one, am glad  and grateful I did.

 Go to any search engine now and remember how this pint-sized ball of purposeful  endeavor and never-say-die determination made you smile. No one ever did it better.

About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen best sellers on business and marketing, several ebooks and over one thousand online articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

"I'm doing what I'm doing for love." Valentine's Day.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. She was the best of wives and the best of mothers. She was such a Yiddishe momme right out of Sophie Tucker, we used to laugh about it. She was the life support for a feckless husband born into cozy wealth who discovered at mid life that he wanted to be a mime (no, I am not making this up) and left her to explain as best she could to her inquisitive Brookline neighbors that Joel had selected grease paint, vacant stare, and rigid immobility in preference to her and the 3 kids.

She was on the cutting edge of every progressive issue, as every good Jewish mother is. And this meant the whole feminist shtick, especially gender equality. She was also a card-carrying member of the "Thatsa my boy" club in which the beloved elder son accepts for a pampered lifetime not just praise but sacred veneration and constant service. And that's why I'm starting my story here, the place you discover just how very splendored love can really be.

The first part takes place the year Ruth and Joel finally hit the divorce courts in the most amiable of actions. She was down but most assuredly not out and wanted to show her nosey friends and relations that she still had what it takes; that she'd had it with clowns of any age or shape, and that she'd snagged herself a wow of a man for her big come-back, one impressive dude, a Harvard man, someone cute and brainy, a goy of a boy, and what a kisser.

Using these enticing features and a slew of others made up to enhance the brew soon had her BBF Marie salivating, a Wagnerian sized shrew who hadn't a single feminine attribute or charm of any kind, but made up for these unfortunate lapses by being really REALLY rich. Marie, interested, became Marie, nagging. When could she meet this prodigy who put her own male lapdog in the shade? And the sooner, the better...  "So, stop with the excuses, already". It was put-up or shut up. How about a Valentine's Day dinner for 4 at the Cafe Budapest in Boston? There would be their famous cherry soup, tokay and Gypsy violinists, all on Marie of course. As I told you, she was REALLY rich.

"Jeffrey, I have a BIG favor to ask you."

The white stretch limousine was ontime to the minute, 7:30 p.m. All the characters were present. Marie was over dressed in what she called a Hungarian hussar costume; a tight fitting blue bodice with miles of gold thread and epaulettes that would have made a minor Habsburg archduke proud. I didn't know whether to laugh or salute... so I muttered the usual "glad to meet yous" and scrunched down to get in the Guido-mobile. But where was Marie's 'til death do us part?

Marie later told me she thought it would be "fun" if she dressed him as a Viennese coachman, circa 1880. No symbolism here, of course. He looked ridiculous, of course. Maybe that was Marie's intention. If so, she got her wish. His uniform was clearly two or three sizes too big for him. His top hat fell over his eyes... and his boots, while polished, were like flip-flops. I saluted him and tried to limit my smile to the appropriate length Emily Post recommended when you meet hubby the lap dog. I made it just a bit bigger because I felt sorry for the schlemiel. After all, he looked like Marie's lunch.

Ruth looked... well, I was bowled over. She was cute as a bug in a rug with a (was it?) mink collar. "Ruthie,"  Marie said,"you look..." and then she said it again as if she didn't quite believe what she was seeing "Henny, doesn't Ruthie look..." As her eyes took in every feature of my winsome self, you could see she was licking her lips, thinking Mazel tov... Mazel tov! And as if to answer Marie and establish ownership, my friend Ruth planted a kiss on me that was a lollapalooza of the genre, the real deal. I never saw it coming.

Okay, I looked terrific that evening. For a guy as disinterested in clothes as I was, (except for the blue cape with red silk lining I got on Carnaby Street in London), I could look like the well turned out gentleman my mother always demanded. I was wearing black tie evening dress, the duds cut by Oxford University's comme il faut tailor.

I was washed, brushed, combed, ironed, buttoned, zipped, bow-tied, with a smile nicely calibrated to be just proper enough to meet her friends and just wicked enough that she'd want to dump them as soon as possible. Rarely has any friend done so much to achieve the desired result. As I was complimenting myself, extolling my finesse and magnanimity Ruthie snuggled up as if there was no tomorrow. As for Marie, she never took her eyes off Ruth, which meant she never took her eyes off me. There was certainly a lot to look at...

"Madam, I understand today is a very special day. These flowers have just arrived for you."

With that the waiter handed over the biggest, most entrancing bouquet I had ever seen. And I got a real smacker as thanks. My initial was on the card... along with that fatal word "love." Only problem is, I didn't send them. I could guess of course, but I couldn't ask. The sender counted on my discretion, on not blurting anything out but playing my part in the play with consummate skill... and I did.

Ruth got up and hoisted a piece of exquisite crystal which featured the double-headed imperial eagle. The sommelier, standing by, filled it with the finest tokay, and then filled the other three glasses, too.

She never looked more beautiful, more determined, more certain of what she must say or how she would say it. The game had suddenly become very serious indeed. And every diner in the Cafe Budapest that memorable evening, immersed as they were in their own rituals of love, knew it.

Ruth, a practised thespian of so many years, had what every actor wants... a dedicated and sympathetic audience, in rapt attention, waiting expectantly for whatever she might say or do. She took her knife and hit her glass three times in prescribed fashion... then she turned and looked at me... her song beginning.

" I am one of those the world looked down on. I'm not what they think I ought to be. Love has made me do things people frown on. But love is life and everything to me."

She was singing to me. Her hands stroked my hair. Her eyes locked on mine. Her look was plaintive. She wanted me to know her, love her. She needed me to know that love wasn't just an important thing.... it was the only thing.

She breathed, she loved. She laughed, she loved. She cried, she loved. It was who she was... what she did. There was no beginning to it... no end. She was the Biblical Ruth of old... whither thou goest, I goeth.

Every person in the restaurant knew he was hearing searing honesty... total integrity. There was no art... no artifice... nothing but one woman and the man she had selected, giving everything, hoping for everything, too proud to ask for anything.

Then the song was over, its last words hanging in the air,

"If the after years bring me tears, it's all right, I'm satisfied. I've broken man made laws, but heaven will forgive me because I'm doing what I'm doing for love."

I wanted to say something, but everything that needed to be said had been said. She knew. And so before I opened my mouth, she touched my lips and whispered "Thanks for tonight. Thanks for everything." I should have gone down on one knee and said them to her...

Envoi.

Sophie Tucker (1886-1966) was known for her brassy, over-the-top style.. Where men were  concerned her tastes were insistent and voracious, entirely appropriate for the "Last of the Red Hot Mammas." But in 1929 she showed the world a very different, tender, beseeching side. The song was "I'm Doing What I'm Doing For Love", and it was that song that was sung for me that evening that is one of a handful of perfect occasions of my eventful life. 67 this year, I haven't married. Go now to any search engine and play this tune and remember your perfect  moment and what you did for love... or might still do.


About the Author

 Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is an avid collector, as well as author of 18 best selling business and marketing books, several ebooks and over one thousand online articles. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

'Life's not worth a damn, 'Til you can say, 'Hey, world, I am what I am' . Some thoughts on turning 67, February 16, 2014.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. These kinds of things are happening to me all the time  now. I was sitting in a booth at the Cambridge Common Restaurant just the  other day and was anxious  to enjoy the same American fare I always get  there, namely a classic hamburger medium well, fresh lettuce and tomato  with a whisper of Bermuda onion; side of onion rings (a specialite' de  la maison), justly renowned up and down Massachusetts Avenue, three half  deviled eggs (uniquely available here) and large diet Coke; make sure there  are three slices of lime. I am most particular about such matters, and don't forget  it, Pookie. Mind, just two won't do.

 Then the snag. I couldn't get out of my top coat, suitably charcoal gray, the one  that I acquired so many years ago in London, at Austin Reed, in that long  ago era when being stylish still mattered to me, though even then not so very  much (to my mother's abiding chagrin).

 This coat, now my straight-jacket, now my jailor... for, you see, I couldn't take  it off and I couldn't get it on. I was a hostage and even doing the shimmy like my  sister Kate didn't help. Nothing did.

 My irksome dilemma was compounded by the fact no waitron (as we call  them in my progressive metropolis) was to hand. No, they were all bunched  together at the entrance, where at least 4 of them cast jaundiced eyes at  the folks (another Cambridge-ism) entering; what tip they might get their one  and only concern.

 And so I waited pondering the thoughts every hostage wherever held had thought;  thoughts like how did I get myself into this friggin' situation... how could I get myself  out of it... and where was the cavalry to rescue me? After all, I pay my taxes.

 Like I said, this wasn't the first time I was trapped inside my top coat... or my  favorite sweater, the thick one from France with the heraldic devices and  fastidious moths... or any of those Ralph Lauren polo shirts, the ones that  mysteriously disappear when certain light-fingered friends decide to spend  the night because they've over served themselves from my dwindling supply of  fine wines and liquors I shall never buy again.

 No, this wasn't the first time a determined garment decided to hold me for  ransom, but it was the longest and most public such event, thus deserving of  the most careful consideration and a thorough vetting of each and every detail,  no matter how picayune you might think. Besides, who asked you for an opinion  anyway?

 So, by now I was one exasperated puppy with a fast rising temperature. I  needed help and the staff had well and truly disappeared. Now what? Out of  the corner of my eye I saw an elderly couple just finishing up. Then the  absolutely unthinkable notion... they could help me. And all of a sudden I was  confronted by one of the most profound and undeniable aspects of aging... that  I, help giver par excellence for my entire life, now needed help.... and I didn't like  that one little bit... not least when my potential rescuers stood up and I realized  with horror the "elderly couple" was my age... yes, card carrying Baby Boomers.  It only worsened my dilemma... and made me feel damn foolish, too.

 I mean, why couldn't I just say in my most congenial and casual way, "Could  you folks give me a hand?". They would have said yes, pulled me up smartly  and removed me from the troublesome coat.

 They would then have smiled and quipped some phrase like "Don't take any  wooden nickles", waved and gone on their merry way with that happy  feeling that  comes when you've taken time to do a good deed you didn't need to do. The whole  thing would have taken 120 seconds, or less.    Besides, I had seen the gentleman look at me struggling. It seems to me he  wanted to help but didn't want to intrude, either for fear he'd be rebuffed by  me or somehow "get involved", a thing that trips us all up. We want to make  the world a better place, we prattle on about it without surcease, but we want  to do it without "getting involved". How this can be accomplished no one knows.  Thus I didn't request his help, and he didn't offer it. I remained trapped, arms pinned.  And to think the gray haired couple and I all grew up on Bob Dylan and  his 1974  masterpiece, "Forever Young," "May you always do for others/ And let others do  for you."

 Giving, yes. Getting, no.

 I'm ok with the first half of Dylan's line. Giving is what successful people do. Giving  is an important aspect of their success. It firmly and unequivocally establishes  them as a person of consequence, a person of empathy and kindness and  generosity; a person who should be touched to ensure good luck and whose every  word is solid gold, ready for chiseling on public buildings.

 Of course I see myself this way and give with the well-honed and always gracious  gesture of the grandest grand seigneur. When misery of any kind strikes within  my circle and often without; (think typhoons in far-away places which even I cannot  find with ease), I respond at once.

 It is not an act of thought; it is rather an act of indelible habit long ago taught and  constantly performed since. It affirms my superior status and good heart and  immediately suggests God's unqualified approbation and bounty. This thought  comforted my God-fearing Puritan ancestors; it comforts me as well, just as it  comforts me to give even where the response is anything but warm.

 One day when I was returning from my walk about the neighborhood, I saw a  family in distress.Their car didn't work, and they were in despair, young children  shrieking. I asked them where they were going and how much they needed.  Connecticut. $500.

 I offered to lend, not give, the money. Could they pay back, say, $50 a month?  "Oh, yes, sir, we can and we will." Fervent thanks were rendered and rendered  again. A week or two after the first payment date, no funds received, I called. I  expected an excuse and a promise for prompt recompense and renewed  appreciation. What I got was an earful of the bluest and most vulgar, every word  an expostulation of the rawest and most offensive; the whole proof positive that no  good deed goes unpunished.

 But here's the rub. I was not disconcerted by the torrent of malice; quite the contrary.  "There but for the grace of God..." What might so easily have resulted in a shouting  match turned instead into a moment of quiet satisfaction and proof of God's love.  Could the man shouting unanticipated obscenities have said as much? Yes, God  moves in mysterious ways and His account of the time we have been given and  used is absolute, infallible, eternal. Yes, this is what happens to the givers, each  blessed and rightly so. But what happens to those who are given? I didn't need  to consider this matter. It had been drilled into me from birth... and now prevented  me from asking for help.

 "If you want it done right, do it yourself," I'd been taught. "God helps those who  help themselves," I'd been assured." "Don't wait to be asked. Take the initiative to  do the right thing and do it now!", every phrase an adamant declaration for  independence here, independence now, independence forever.

 These were the shibboleths of the people who shaped me, theirs the adamant  voices ringing in my ear today. And they are right, for there is nothing more important  as you age than the personal freedom and independent living which are constantly  at risk and being chipped away, threatened, diminished day by day. Then out  of nowhere, I heard a song begin to gather in my brain. And it went something like  this...

 "I am what I am/ I am my own special creation/ So come take a look/  Give me the hook or the ovation."

 And all of a sudden, as the song rose and its insistent lyrics soared, I got that  feeling that I've known before, the feeling that He is there... that He is watching...  and against every logical thought and sentiment He cares.

 Thus did epiphany and perfect recognition hit me squarely between the eyes  in an urban greasy spoon in the unlikely form of an anthem for drag queens  everywhere featuring this electrifying line, "There's one life, and there's no return  and no deposit." (The song, of course, is "I Am What I Am" music and lyrics  by Jerry Herman from the 1983 production of "La Cage aux Folles". Go now to  any search engine and find it. I prefer the version by George Hearn with resonant.  adamant voice enough to uplift millions, including you and me.)

 "I don't want praise. I don't want pity."

 And so the truths poured out. I shuffle now, my once strident walk slower now.  This doesn't matter.

 My right hand tremors,  This doesn't  matter.

 Shoelaces a struggle to tie. This doesn't matter either.

 The agile letters that jump up and down on a page challenging meaning.  This, too, doesn't matter. What then does?

 The waitress knew. "I'm sorry you had to wait so long. Need some help with  your coat?" and so my incapacity begot a new friend with radiant smile  and, in short order deviled eggs, onion rings, and apple crunch with vanilla  ice cream... all on the house. "You deserve it," she said.... and maybe I'm ready  to admit that I do.

 Dedication by the Author. It is my privilege and pleasure to dedicate this article  to Daniel Fischer, my "monkey" and friend, a man of spirit, persistence,  dedication and love. Remember, you are not alone and  your example and  dazzling smile inspire us all and always will, none more so than me.

. About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen best selling business and marketing books, as well as several ebooks and over one thousand online articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

Learn A Weird Secrets To Get Your Ex Back

by Justin Sinclair





If you have just gone through a breakup and want to get your ex back, there are some things you should do and other things that you shouldn't do. If you're texting game is good, you may be able to initiate contact with your ex. This all depends on how your breakup happened. If it was a nasty breakup, it's almost always best to wait a few weeks before you contact your ex again. Also avoid falling into the "creeper zone" sometimes it's just better to let the relationship go. You will have to judge this by your own relationship context. But, if you think there is a reasonable chance you can get back with your ex, there are some simple texts you can try in order to test the water. The following texts explain all the secrets to making up:

"Hey, I think we should talk sometime."

The reason that this message is so powerful is because it is not too aggressive, yet sets a tone for the direction you want to take the relationship. You aren't asking to go out on a date that night, you just want to re-establish the lines of communication. It doesn't sound too needy and can show that you have matured (if that was an issue in the relationship). Furthermore, you let your ex know that you are still thinking about them and that they are still important to you.

" I want to know how you are doing."

This is similar to the first text in the sense this it communicates that there is still interest on your part. By making the conversation focused on your ex, they will feel that you still care about them. In a particularly painful breakup, this can be very important. It's important, as well, to not put your partner on the defensive when you are re-initiating contact. There should be no blame to go around. By focusing the on the positive aspects of your relationship, you will be more likely to gain the attraction that you first had for one another. If your ex is receptive to talking, you can even get more personal. Saying things like "I miss you" or " I miss what we had" are ways to remind your ex that they are still important in your life. Furthermore, these kinds of statements can help heal hurt that your partners felt in the relationship.

"Hey, what's up?"

While this may seem overly simplified and is by no means a "line", it could be the most important thing you say to get your ex back. Anything that gets you talking with your ex again is a good thing, as it will likely reignite the initial things that attracted you to each other in the first place. By talking with your ex, you will increase the likelihood that you will get your ex back. The best part about this strategy is that you get to go at your own pace and build slowly. Healing a relationship takes time, and you are the best to judge how quickly it will take that relationship to heal. We have shared with you the secrets to making up, so give it a try today!

Another installment of dining with history. Today four silver second course dishes from the extravagant service commissioned by the richest commoner in England, William Thomas Beckford (1759-1844), kindred spirit.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. The catalog entry for Lot 65 in Sotheby's 23 January, 2014  "Of Royal And Noble Descent" sale was arid and sharply descriptive in the usual  fashion:

 "Four Georgian second course dishes, one Smith & Sharp, one John Robins, two  Philip Rundell for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, London, respectively 1781, 1809 and  1823.

 circular, engraved with a coat of arms below applied gadroon borders.

 10 1/4 in. diameter 2786 gr. 89 oz. 12 dwt."

 All standard, nothing to elevate your blood pressure. Then the facts that did the  trick for these were part of the lavish commission ordered by William Thomas  Beckford, the wonder, the envy of England, inheriting as he did, just 10 years old,  over one million pounds sterling, the equivalent of over 117 million pounds in today's  money. At once the greatest race of the 18th century began, between an  imaginative young man with money to burn and a colossal fortune that dwarfed  even his breathtaking ability to spend it... at least for a time.

 The music.

 William Beckford was many things... visionary, aesthete, connoisseur, with a  plethora of talents, skills, abilities and perfect, unrivalled taste. Taste that he shows  in the music I have selected to accompany this article, the "Arcadian Pastoral". Now  the fact that he was a composer of elegance and finesse is not the wonder.  Many cultivated gentlemen of this time of radiant enlightenment were that and produced  their share of limpid, even beguiling notes accordingly.

 What makes Beckford's composition still worth the listening is that he had both talent  and the instructor par excellence, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a felicitous pairing  for even this scion of unrivalled Croesus. The result, of course, isn't Mozart. Nothing  but the inimitable original could be that... but the result is good, pleasing to the ear, a  work one calls nice, not bad, really not bad at all, (as you can see in any search engine).

 That description would have infuriated Beckford... and spurred him to work harder and  harder still to prove just how good he really was. But here he missed the point of  his astonishing life, for he was not destined to be known as a master of music... or of  painting... or architecture... or literature... or of any other of his broad range of achievements  and always workmanlike results. No, indeed. His genius was himself, a phenomenon  at once unique, unparalleled, without peer or equal. This was William Thomas Beckford,  and great England had never beheld such a creation as this... and never would again  to the general impoverishment of the people and their ability to dream and imagine.

 Born into the plutocracy.

 To understand  Beckford, you must understand his world, for he was a fortunate son  not of the upper gentry and titled nobility. No, indeed. His ancestors were the merchant  adventurers who made England the very byword of wealth, the object of every nimble  fingered thief and confidence man, including any number of marauders, dictators and  self-proclaimed generals with expensive tastes, high aspirations and an army readily  available with dreams of avarice and untrammeled plunder.

 Beckford was precisely the kind of fellow whose capacious pockets they meant to pick if  Rule Britannia's oceanic resources should ever waver for even a moment. Such people  lived at a level of stupendous excess, mind-blowing extravagance, lavish immoderation...  the way in which we'd all like to live, not to mention that their unending wealth went  untaxed, social nirvana indeed.

 How rich were they? Well, consider this comment from a visiting English aristocrat  when he first saw Thomas Jefferson's always-in-process, never-quite-finished mansion Monticello.

 "My horses live better than Mr. Jefferson," he sniffed. And he was right , for England's  countryside was littered with palaces not just grandiloquently named pretensions,  "Monticello", indeed. There was nothing "little" about the world into which the Beckford  heir was born. It was as solid as the Bank of England -- and slave labor -- could  make it.

 We don't have to wonder what this world was like; the insightful pen of Jane Austen's  genius makes it entirely apparent, particularly in her beloved favorite, "Mansfield Park",  published in 1814. In it the source of Sir Thomas Bertram's wealth is hinted at rather  than robustly disclosed.

 "Estates", it says. In the "West Indies", it says, with the veil of obscurity thrown over  all the often troubling details, for even by Beckford's early years slavery was already  a hot potato for England's governing class, the less said the better, excused by the  glib response that, after all, all the great civilizations were based on slavery, particularly  those of Ancient Greece and Rome which constituted the models and basis for learning  of every young English gentleman.

 Que voulez vous? What can one do about it?, and how is dear Lady Bertram and her  adorable pug?

 Daddy

 If there were any justice in this world (there isn't), the hero of this tale would be the  young heir's piously unlamented father, William Beckford, Senior.  He was the very  essence of John Bull's plutocracy, twice Lord Mayor of the City of London, a man of  turtle soup, the roast beef of Olde England, God Save the King, and the extensive  sugar plantations in Jamaica that coined money for a man who knew the value of  hard work and was of an entrepreneurial disposition... He did and he was.

 One fact shines a bright light on his considerable popularity and political acumen.  It is reported that on one notable occasion six dukes, two marquises, twenty  three earls, four viscounts, and fourteen barons gathered to honor him, then fell to  demolishing a repast beyond Lucullan. It was gutling on a heroic scale, and upon its  belching conclusion the gentlemen of England uncinched their belts in honor of  Beckford, hip, hip, hurrah, God love 'im!

 Sadly, one senses the refined, sensitive heir didn't much venerate his sire for all that  his monument graced the Guildhall. This is a not uncommon phenomenon. The first  generation begins the dirty business of grubbing for money. Money is the goal, the  aspiration, the very god for this generation. Such people are tenacious and keep every  penny ever earned. Such people say "Do you think money grows on trees?" and other  pointed aphorisms for the feckless and so they become notorious for getting their  money's worth, and more.

 The second, helped by the substantial parental leg-up of the first, ascends further  faster. They are determined to erase any trace of where their comfortable capital  derives. This would be Beckford Senior.

 The third is thereby free to posture and preen as that most desirable of creatures, the  English gentleman, sustained by wealth that is called "old money" and used to gild  the already gilded lily. This most assuredly is William Thomas  Beckford, the very  acme of the genre, a many splendored thing, splendidly accoutered, perfectly turned  out, every solid gold crested button gleaming, a non-pareil of the first order... a man  who has everything but the knack for making money.

 However, what did that matter when there was so very much of it as for Beckford  there surely was? And so he set about the unutterably fascinating, all consuming task  of living as a grand seigneur should live, summoning the purveyors of the best of  everything to provide for him, to serve him, to cater to and perfect him, thereby  enabling him to become the apogee of his wonderful, dazzling, awesome self.

 And so he traveled to the best of places and met the best of people. People craved  the honor of his acquaintance especially if there was tangible benefit to be derived,  as there usually was. He was given a seat in Parliament, first at Wells (1784-1790),  then Hindon (1790-1795, then again from 1806-1820). Whether they got any  benefit from his election is doubtful, but they were no doubt proud and grateful  to add M.P. to his thinly lettered name and so enhance his worldly renown, the  most important thing in life, the only thing worth having, the thing beside which  all else paled, dull and profitless.

 "Vathek", "Beckford's Folly", renown written in perpetual ink and in transient stone.

 Once he had this insight he began to live it. And so, just 26 years old he sat down and,  in French, wrote ""Vathek", a Gothic novel. Like so many first books by young authors  this one was overwritten, too many words, too many characters, too many  misconceptions, and a plot line that went too many places all at once. Still, it offered  what only youth can offer... energy, unfettered imagination, boldness and a belief not  yet tarnished in love and miracles. Thus the reading public took this ungainly book to  its heart and has never forgotten it unlike so many better written books without a soul.  Thus Beckford gained his place in history... a place Fonthill Abbey secured forever.

 Today Fonthill is just a place on a map, a handful of rocks in Wiltshire's lovely  countryside. But in 1796 when construction began it was Beckford's exuberant vision  of what living could be if only one was bold enough to dream. The result was Fonthill  Abbey, "Beckford's Folly", a place into which Beckford poured not just his money but his  yearning soul.

 And because he was Beckford of England his pied a terre had to be the biggest, the  grandest, the most extravagantly appointed, the dernier cri in everything...  not  least a central tower that he insisted scrape the sky.

 This first attempt to achieve this goal reached 300 feet and collapsed; the second also  reached 300 feet and collapsed. His third vainglorious attempt spewed its stones across  the countryside... This was the end of everything...the money, of course, had been frittered  away as heirs in the third generation will do.

 He never did get his peerage and become Lord Beckford there was that unsavory  business with William Courtenay, later 9th Earl of Devon, just 10 years old when  Beckford met him and commenced the juiciest of scandals, so delightful for his many  envious detractors who saw the very hand of God in this comeuppance.    It all ate away at his patrimony... and his bright shining renown, now sadly tarnished.  And so it went until in 1844 he died in comparative obscurity... his fortune now just  80,000 pounds sterling; more than enough for most any man but not for this particular  man and the dreams which cost him so much.

 Envoi.

 Beckford's silver service, opulent indeed as you may imagine, was bequeathed along  with so much else to his daughter Susan Euphemia (1786-1859). She married  Alexander Hamilton,10th Duke of Hamilton through whom these handsome pieces  in excellent condition have descended. They are now resident here in Cambridge,  a place of clever youth and young savants with esoteric interests. He would have  loved being here... as I do who will keep these plates in good order for the next  generation. And, yes, I shall most surely use them and invite my special friends  to do so, including the shade of William Thomas Beckford, kindred spirit.



About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is an avid collector, as well as author of 18 best selling business and marketing books, several ebooks and over one thousand online articles. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

'That song really sticks with you, doesn't it?' An appreciation for the life of Pete Seeger, patriarch of the American protest song, dead at 94, January 27, 2014.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. When I heard that Pete Seeger had died I was 16 all over  again, immersed in the righteous rituals of American adolescence, which in that  year of our Lord 1973 meant the music and always pointed lyrics of Pete Seeger,  the man who used singalong music and gentle verse to remind us of where  we'd come from, what we had lost along the way, and what we needed to  recapture at the risk of losing the best of what we were if we failed. 

 Pete Seeger, you see, wasn't just a gifted musician with the ability to  get his strongly held views across with minimum rancor and animosity. He  wasn't just a gifted lyricist with a poet's discerning skill for selecting just the  right word. He wasn't just an entertainer who skillfully performed but who  touched his audiences, making them feel, right down to the very youngest, that  they mattered and could make the significant difference for good we all want to  make.

 Seeger was all this and more, but more than all this he was the lyric  conscience of the Great Republic, a man who sung what he believed and  what he knew America must remember or lose our very soul. He knew what  to say and how to say it not just for the moment but for ages yet to come, ages  that would thank him for refreshing their tired and often daunted spirits which  needed such revival in order to forge ahead.

 For as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told Seeger after hearing his iconic  rendition of "We Shall Overcome","That song really sticks with you, doesn't it?" They  all did... and we all felt better because of it. We felt linked to each other, empowered  by each other, valued, and yes, loved by each other. Seeger sang, and life seemed  worth living again and each of us a child of possibility and joy.

 Seeger, the early years, working out which side he was on.

 Seeger was born in New York City May 3,1919 into what he described as a family  "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition." A paternal  ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from Wurttemberg, Germany, had  emigrated to America during the American Revolution and married into an old  New England family in the 1780s. 

 Seeger's father, the Harvard-trained composer and musicologist, Charles Louis  Seeger, Jr., was born in Mexico City. He established the first musicology curriculum  in the United States at the University of California in 1913, and was a key founder  of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology. His mother, Constance de Clyver  (nee' Edson), raised in Tunisia, trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a  concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School.

 Young Seeger's world was distinguished, artistic, international in outlook, tolerant,  intellectual, cosmopolitan, free thinking, free speaking, where knowledge was valued,  conversation was sharp, witty, no respecter of persons; where children were most  assuredly not expected to be neither seen nor heard. Quite the contrary. It was an  exciting world which we in our "wired" age can only imagine, for our  ability to  "communicate" with each other has ensured our inability to do so.

 Preppie.

 >From age 4, Seeger was away at boarding school, a card-carrying preppie  with all that entails. At 13 he was enrolled in the Avon Old Farms prep school in  Avon, Connecticut , from which he graduated in1936. That summer destiny  struck a shy, withdrawn, bookish boy in the unlikely form of the five-string banjo.

 It was at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near  Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer  Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a force for preserving and performing the sounds of  the great Eastern mountains.The folks were hat-tippin' friendly, gaunt, austere,  God-fearing, hospitable to a fault, always ready to dance a measure and  thankee-ma'am for the privilege.

 There amidst the mountain folk, passionate in love and hate, young Seeger  heard his future. We may imagine it to be Lunsford's version of "Swannanoa  Tunnel" or "Dogget's Gap", which made even the most staid jump up and dance  like there was no tomorrow. Did he but know it, Pete Seeger, scion of New  England was home.     Harvard, short and sweet.

 In 1936, at the age of 17, Seeger joined the Young Communist League like  so many idealistic and ill-informed young people did. It may have been  the single worst decision of his life; in 1942, he compounded his blunder by  becoming a member of the Communist Party, USA.

 He was older now, and this fateful decision reverberated through his entire life,  limiting his influence, doing no good whatsoever as he soon came to see and admit,  but not before he gave before the House Un-American Activities Committee a ringing  endorsement of free speech and free association. (August 18, 1955). It was  admirable, even heroic, but ill-advised, leading as it did to his indictment for  contempt of Congress, March 26, 1957. (He was acquitted in 1962.)

 Senator Joseph McCarthy was riding high in those disgraceful days... and Seeger's  well bred gentility was no match for the red-baiting vulgarity that was McCarthy's acrid  stock in trade.

 Seeger must have wondered as he was being pummelled and insulted... castigated  and maligned... demeaned and vilified ... threatened and outraged whether he  wouldn't have been better off by returning to Harvard where he matriculated in  1936. Like many Crimson undergraduates he adored the lifestyle... except for those  pesky classes that got in the way of perfection. In short order Seeger's  grades  dropped, he lost his scholarship, and he and Harvard agreed he should take a hiatus  and come back later.

 In this scenario he would have come back to Cambridge, taking his A.B. degree,  then perhaps a doctorate in musicology with a pleasant domain at one of the Ivies;  Yale perhaps which, like Harvard, had Seeger family connections. This is not just  idle fancy, either. Seeger had the professorial demeanor down pat and he had a  major project at hand, his lifelong interest in finding, hearing, copying, printing,  disseminating, and preserving the people's music that is called folk. It was  important work and he would have done it with thoroughness, care, scrupulous  accuracy. 

 But he choose another course, a more difficult and challenging course and even  the verbal brickbats of McCarthy and his minions did not persuade him to take  the soft landing in Cambridge with a gracious house on Francis Ave and the  adulation of generations of undergrads of liberal predilections... he had decided  which side he was on, and that made all the difference.

 "We'll stand it no more, come what may."

 What happened next was a kind of arcane dance... Pete Seeger either alone or as  part of an ensemble (the Weavers, say) would compose a tune that would invariably  contain a stanza, a line, even a single word that would infuriate the Babbitts of Main  Street America.

 The producers would then water it down, preserving the lilt of the music but with lyrics  which irritated no one but the purists like Seeger himself who watched less controversial  performers like Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez and Judy Collins rise high on his work. They  were acceptable to middle America. He most assuredly was not. This must have frustrated  him, but if it did, he kept silent happy to serve the cause of peace, civil rights, social justice.  He was a team player and served the general good, not just his personal gain and  glory.

 Having made this decision, this man of commitment and vision, lived it. He went where  injustice was to be found, where things could be improved, where he could make a  difference and where his songs of hope and dedication rallied the faithful, people whose  wrongs were real but too often ignored, which meant forgotten. Few people knew America  from its roots up more than Seeger and the people he knew he aroused and comforted with  music that soared, reminding us all that the better was always possible, though it might be a  long time coming and demand everything we had.

 Now Pete Seeger rests, the man who sang for so many. At this moment, let the artist he most admired, Bob Dylan, sing for him...

 "May God bless and keep you always/ May your wishes all come true/  May you always do for others/ And let others do for you/  May you build a ladder to the stars/And climb on every rung  May you stay forever young/ Forever young, forever young  May you stay forever young."

 It is not too much to ask for this man of sweet temper and friendly persuasion,  the man who fought for a lifetime for fundamental fairness, equality of  opportunity, acceptance of diversity, for courtesy and community, for  brotherhood and for love, always for love. For here he never stinted.


About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen best selling business and marketing books, several ebooks and over one thousand online articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

'Cruel and usual punishment.' Thoughts on the way we put people to death and on one man in particular, Dennis McGuire, executed at 53, January 16, 2014.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. Since the beginning of human time, we have been engaged  in finding ways of killing each other in every imaginable way. For thousands of  years with no respite whatsoever, we have used our potent ingenuity to hack  each other to bits, stab, slice, mince, pierce, shred, pull, burn, smother, shoot,  poison, impale, boil, flay, disembowel, crush, stone, dismember, crucify, and otherwise  eradicate anyone deemed unacceptable and because they were deemed unacceptable  we gave no thought at all to the means used to dispose of the offending humanity.

 They transgressed against our exacting standards; whatever those standards  might be. It was enough, therefore, that they be removed; never mind how or when  or where. We decreed death... it didn't much matter how that death was delivered,  so long as it did not affront our comfortable morality or mental serenity.

 Yet despite millennia of experimentation with the tools and means of eradication,  we find ourselves today in a state of utmost confusion on the matter of how to end  the lives of people who have with malice aforethought destroyed the innocent people  who did nothing more than find themselves in the wrong place at the  wrong time.  They had hurt others even unto death itself; thus it was fair and equitable that they be  hurt in their turn, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and if they suffered as they approached  eternity, what difference did that make?

 They were, after all, despicable, contemptible, humans in name only, the dross of  humanity, not worth a single thought, much less pang or regret. Kill by all means.  Kill by every means. Kill whenever necessary. Kill wherever necessary. It was all in  a day's work, every day. Thus even amongst the most civilized of people the apparatus  of death and disposal grew, a growth industry flourishing everywhere though we made  every effort to ignore its grisly manifestations and ghastly secrets and procedures,  pretending we just didn't see.

 Thus for a lifetime, I took in my stride the unending series of grainy newspaper  photos, condemned thuggish men (for they usually were men) who starred at me with  dead eyes and a look of baleful resignation. They had caused maximum pain; they must  receive maximum pain in return, for of course that is what the victim's family wanted as  well as 60% of Americans overall for whom the implementation of death was insufficient.

 What America wanted was a Death Row morality play of the kind portrayed by  Montgomery Cliff in the 1951 masterpiece "A Place In the Sun" where the film ends as  the regretful convict truly sorry at last walks to oblivion, his brain already overwrought  with the sharpest of memories, the most pitiable of fears; a fervent prayer in every  step, that there is a God of mercy, that this God will "save a wretch like me". Hallelujah!  Dennis McGuire must have prayed for this with unrestrained ardor, but if he did his  prayer went unanswered.

 Dennis McGuire, rapist, murderer, chemical experiment, human being.

 It is hard to feel sorry for McGuire. After all he brought his travail on himself when on  February 12, 1989 he raped and stabbed  to death pregnant newlywed Joy Stewart in  Preble County in western Ohio. It was the kind of brutal, senseless crime that screams  out for capital punishment, swift, sure, certain, unlamented in any way. Thus when he  was later arrested on an unrelated assault charge, he bargained for an acquittal by telling  investigators he knew the murderer. Then he named his own brother-in-law.

 This assertion unraveled quickly; McGuire himself was then charged and with DNA  evidence convicted. Last month, he admitted his guilt in a letter to Ohio Governor John  Kasich who then rejected clemency. The decision had thus been made that McGuire  would be eliminated... but how? Here the insistent bumbling of local officials at every  level turned a man of obloquy and disgust into a fellow human being worthy of civic  consideration and God's unmitigated love, to the point where ignoring his egregious  history diminishes us. How did this happen?

 What is "cruel", what is "unusual" punishment?

 For most of recorded history, capital  punishment was designed not merely to kill,  but to do so with maximum pain and suffering; responsible officials would have been  sharply criticized and seen as derelict if any part or portion of their hurtful, brutal agenda  had been neglected... and so no part ever was; their success to be measured in the  screams and shrieks their unsurpassed finesse rending fragile flesh ensured.

 However, in the late 17th century things began to change as "cruel and unusual"  punishment began to be seen, at least by progressive jurists, as intolerable, unjust,  unnecessary, a manifestation of the barbarism they had as enlightened men outgrown,  to their honor, credit, and glory.

 Thus did the English ensure that such punishment be sharply condemned in one of the  essential documents of our civilization, the 1689 Bill of Rights, drawn up 300 years before McGuire's heinous crime. This being the case surely more humane methods of execution  must have been implemented in the last three centuries. You may judge for yourself.

 Three centuries ago it took 10-15 minutes to hang the accused. When the sharp descending  knife was invented by Dr. Guillotine in 1791 that was slashed considerably, in a deliberate  attempt to decrease pain and increase efficiency.

 Now consider Dennis McGuire. He was the "beneficiary" of the latest killing technique,  intravenous doses of two drugs, the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone.  The result was that McGuire lingered 26 horrifying minutes, the slowest minutes of a  life which was ending in squalor, terror and Hell... and  unnecessary pain, sudden snorts,  irregular breathing, writhing, gasping.

 "Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God" his daughter, Amber, said as she watched these  final, excruciating minutes which passed so slowly. The double drug injection, never used  before, so little studied and known had produced by far the slowest execution in Ohio history  and one which could not possibly be regarded as anything other than cruel and unusual punishment. How did this happen? Herein is the heart of the terrible dilemma confronting  officials in every state and the Great Republic overall.

 The problem.

 In a nutshell the problem is this: There is at this moment no reliable way in Ohio,  where 5 more men await their fate on Death Row for executions to be carried  out.  Thus Ohio found itself in the unenviable position of needing to execute a man  but having no convenient and reasonably inexpensive way to do it.Thus as Dennis  McGuire's attorney Allen Bohnert said, what Ohio did was simply "a failed, agonizing  experiment", not least because the drugs only arrived the day before and no one at  the prison had ever used it before.

 No wonder it took such an unusually long time to kill... and why the condemned man  gasped so often and so loudly as he approached his end. He was suffering from a  medical  phenomenon called "air hunger" that caused him to suffer "agony and terror"  but which no one involved expected, for the simple reason they were completely unfamiliar  with these drugs, their application, and  consequences of use.

 But was it legally "cruel and unusual"?

 It is clear the execution of Dennis McGuire was botched, bumbled, flubbed, mishandled,  mismanaged, muffed, muddled, goofed up, and generally bollixed. However, does that  automatically and necessarily mean it was cruel and unusual punishment? To see,  I sought the opinion of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William Brennan in the 1972  case "Furman v.Georgia." Here are his four essential queries:

 1) Was the punishment too severe for the crime?  2) Was it arbitrary?  3) Did the punishment offend society's sense of justice?

 By these three criteria, the deed was neither cruel nor unusual, but Brennan's fourth point  is telling.

 4) Was the punishment more effective than a less severe penalty?

 The answer is clearly that McGuire's amateurish execution was far more severe than  it needed to be to achieve the objective, for he deserved capital punishment for his  crime but not the debacle of its execution. And it is here that Ohio and the other 30  states using lethal injection must act... for no one at any time for any reason deserves  to be treated in the profoundly unsettling way Dennis McGuire was. Kill the man for the  deed, but do not humiliate or degrade him.This is the right and civilized thing to do, and  as we aspire to and claim civility, so we must do this and do it now for we are little more  than barbaric until we do.

 Envoi

 I have selected as the musical accompaniment to this article, the score for the 1967  film "In Cold Blood," based on the runaway best-selling 1966 book by Truman Capote.  Composed by Quincy Jones, the music is stark, threatening, menacing, frightening.  In these eerie notes you can feel the crime and the death of 4 innocent people and  the two guilty ones, by hanging; the means Dennis McGuire might have selected,  had he been given the chance... Go to any search engine and find it now. Don't listen  to it alone and never of a stormy evening when the wind blown trees brush against  your windows and the night breeds contorted figures who mean you no good and  seem to be inching towards you with looming threat and horrid purpose. Don't open  the front door to anyone.


About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen best selling business books, several ebooks and over one thousand online articles. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.