'Many a new day... I'll scrub my neck and I'll brush my hair and start all over again." My father, Oklahoma, life, hope.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. He waited a spell before he said it, no doubt carefully  looking for just the right moment to tell me, knowing that the intelligence would be  unwelcome, even unsettling, certainly life changing, therefore potentially dangerous,  a thing to be approached and dealt with as if holding a radio active element with tongs.  Yes, hazardous indeed...

 "I'm going to do it," he said... I didn't need to be told what "it" was, I knew. And  to tell the strict truth, he had laid down a trail of clues, hints and innuendos for  months just like Hansel and Gretel with their bread crumbs. But that was just conjecture,  a possibility, table talk to be treated as serious or not depending on how many pieces  of pie had been ingested whilst the subject was under discussion. One slice meant not  likely, two suggested a distinct possibility, and any more than two he was packing his trunk  bidding the world to catch up or eat his dust... and there is nothing more serious than  that.

 Quo vadis?

 Could it be just as simple as the simple fact that humans like to see what is on the other  side of that hill over yonder? "Why did the chicken cross the road?", my father used to  ask the unwary. "Why, to get to the other side", and then he'd laugh as you would laugh  at a rube from the city who didn't know up from down. Maybe we're programmed by the  Ultimate Authority to leave hearth and home... in pursuit of the "something  better"  we're sure is our individual and collective destiny.

 I used to wonder about this when I was growing up. Why did Abraham Lincoln's family,  for instance, move so much... to Virginia...to Kentucky... to Indiana... to Illinois? Were  they reckless, feckless, incapable of staying put and turning the good into the better?

 Or were they far sighted visionaries who had to go because remaining would have  been so much easier and thus beneath them, for they were a proud, assertive people  and knew they were worthy of any benefit they might dream of and seize?

 They called that destiny, and it was manifest to each of them... and so they went on  their travels to achieve it... as they so often did. To move was to live and so they must  go until their very last journey to their eternal destination.

 Just a year ago.

 It's been just about a year now since this journey seemed likely for him. His wife,  my step-mother Miss Ellie, slipped into the hereafter as easily as taking a breath. We  were advised to expect the worst, at any time.

 As for him he looked like he was waiting for the Grim Reaper to open the door of the  Black Mariah and escort him to forever. He suddenly seemed ancient, frail, ready,  resigned, even eager for what was coming.

 Waiting seemed pointless, aggravating, irritating, and a threat to the perfect tableau  of death we were all constructing, more to show ourselves that we had given him a  good send-off, the send-off he had waited a lifetime to get and which must showcase  him with all due respect, love, and the certainty that he had received his due, every jot  and tittle.

 "I'm ready for whenever the Good Lord takes me". The vital concerns of daily  life were no longer part of his reality. He had put his foot on the next road, the  final road... but in the event he did not commence the journey.

 Everything, everyone was ready for the new, sleek, easy as snap, crackle, and pop,  3-step, "Howdie, ma'am", quick speed, strip the corpse and burn it American way of  death, prayers extra. We were awaiting this... we were prepared for this... we knew  how to do this. But then the unexpected occurred, the thing that upset the apple cart.  He lived. And this startled us, astounded us, and forced us to change the game plan,  just as he was having to do. ("I can still catch the 4.45 to Chicago if I run.")

 What is it that causes a man whose deteriorating condition has prompted the urgent  and adamant communications of a posse of medical  personnel to stop the process  of withdrawal and expiration and live again?

 The sapient physicians will cite a given tablet or therapy. Family members and friends  will speak confidently of the infinite power of love, whilst the still living being at the  center of the conundrum says God's will, which despite a legion of disbelieving  scientists remains credible, vibrant, and reassuring. And so the first of many a new  day dawned on an enigma, with awe, relief, joy, and a renewed commitment to life, the  most important condition of our human reality, for without it nothing is possible. With it,  everything is.

 "O Death where is thy sting?" Now what?

 The process of dying is the average Joe's only opportunity to enjoy the prerogatives  and privileges of a prince. At the court of  Louis XIV, for instance, when the king was  ill, and especially when the king lay dying (1715) the smell of his gangrene overpowered  the combined perfumes of the gentlemen of France. Learned physicians from the  Sorbonne in their long, sweeping silk gowns would troop ensemble to la chambre  du roi to sniff his evacuations and render their opinion about his longevity; an opinion  on which the future of many gentlemen rested, for to be too early in leaving the  old regime... or too late in embracing the new... had the most serious consequences.  "Charme' " was the highest rating for what they passed in chamber pot under their  fastidious noses and minute review. "Charme'" meant life.

 In our death averse civilization, where we hope that mentioning the matter as little  as possible will forestall its certain existence and execution, each of us becomes as  much the center of affairs as the Sun King himself.

 As death approaches, we are admitted, weighed, dieted, measured, wheel chaired,  analyzed, observed, discussed, considered, reconsidered, lamented, wept over,  wept for, babied, prayed for, praised, kissed (including by total strangers), fluffed,  boxed, organized, advised, critiqued, photographed, questioned, listened to,  eulogized, spruced up, sent flowers, sent candy, send cakes and cookies... and this  is only part of our way of death.

 All this is done for you on the expectation that you will do your share,  namely be as upbeat and cheerful as possible; that you will go through all the  necessary and inevitable steps promptly, without inconveniencing anyone by  failing to adhere to their (always brisk) schedule for your demise, and that at the  end of the day you die... allowing the final obsequies to occur and every cliche in  the calendar thought, given, photographed, videotaped, and complimented by  one and all at how well it had gone. Next!

 But he did not die despite the panoply of preparations, expectations, and the  learned opinions of every professional engaged in the matter. The lead physician in  the case called me one afternoon and told me with the polished certainties of the  medical ilk that death was scheduled for T minus 5 hours and counting. And that  was that.

 Only it wasn't.

 To the surprise of all, including the principal actor himself, the consternation of  many, and the downright irritation of some (those whose prayers and presentations  had been the most ostentatious), the man known to history as Donald Marshall  Lant lived... thereby being continued in the dicey, unpredictable, messy and  often baffling business of living, rather than the adamant certainties of death.

 For instance, when he returned alive to the dining room of the assisted living  facility where he had last been discussed and hugged as a certain goner, there  was a notable frisson, as if he had farted in the elevator; it was, it seemed, mal vu  to return alive after such a perfect farewell. "Forgotten but not gone", as one wag  quipped.

 What a comedown for the man who expected to wake up in the bosom of the  Lord, amongst the saints who are marching in, most assuredly one of their  high-stepping number. But instead he lived... and that was the greatest gift of all,  the rest certain to occur in due course but put aside for now. There could still  be, would be dreams... and these dreams could still come true in the many a  new day that were now his.

 Thus he was informing me, not asking my permission or inviting my opinion  but acting like the patriarch he had been for so long. He was leaving the California  where he had lived so long and with such comfort and contentment and moving  to Oklahoma. He had a list of "reasons" at the ready, my brother and his simpatica  wife of long standing were near at hand, the cost of living was dramatically  lower, and, perhaps though unstated, the poignant memories of Miss Ellie were  too potent and bittersweet in the suite where they had loved and lost each other.

 But there was, I think, one more reason, that to stay ensconced in the verdant  grandeur of California was like waiting for the inevitability of death, a condition  that sapped the joy from everything and left him dispirited and low. Motion meant  life... and he still had life to spend and in abundance.

 Thus whilst I advanced reasons for caution and deliberation, his mind and imagination  raced ahead, Rodgers and Hammerstein giving him in "Oklahoma" (1943) not just one  of the most lyric of their incomparable repertoire but the best reason of all: I sang off key   "Many a new face will please my eye", and he instantly responded off key, "Many a  new love will find me." Then I knew for a certainty many a new day would dawn for him  and that these would be the best of all.

 Envoi.

 Go now to any search engine, and play "Many A New Day" and let this plucky song work its happy magic for you.



About the Author

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

'I've been workin' on my rewrite, that's right.' An open letter to a young friend who wants to be a scribbler.

Author's program note. I saw the way you looked at that photo of me on the  back of my first book. I looked so young, well-scrubbed, brushed and combed,  so smart with a dollop of profound sensitivity about the mouth, supposing I was  ready for anything, not even knowing the questions needing to be answered, much  less the answers themselves.  '  While your father, who is the best friend you'll ever have in this world (just help  him show you) uttered the expected pleasantries to ascertain how I was  faring on Spaceship Earth and what mischief I was bringing to the world these  days, I really looked at you in that disconcerting way I have. Your eyes, that  fleeting look offered nothing less than the first real confession of your young life.  And it was nothing less than a revelation and best kept under cerebral lock  and key for infrequent reminding.

 You saw that picture of me and understood, if only for a minute, that I had once been  as young as you are today, as young and determined, fortified by ardor and bold  audacity. You saw me... and thought about yourself, as one does. It was no longer  my photo on that cover... it was yours and the magic of the photographer's craft  mixed with the total fire power you packed into that glance made for an image to  make the indolent world sit up and take notice. You had arrived... you were ready  to astonish and awe... you had something to say and the words to say it... and were  determined the world should hear it.

 And then you heard your so decent, ever practical father say, "Look at the electrical  outlets, son. Dr. Lant was just telling me they're solid gold.", and he gave one of them  a good smart tap reiterating the words to ensure you understood what he'd said.  Words per se might mean nothing to your dad, but words that produced the  dazzling ostentation of gold electrical outlets were well worth the understanding.  The man who could throw away good money on self-indulgent lavishness was  a man worth knowing, and that's a fact. And so I was...

 ...and so I did what folks blessed with the riches of knowledge must do to justify their  existence... they must share, and not just insipid platitudes either, but as much naked,  undeniable truth as their youthful auditor can stand, and even more.

 For in such a conversation we elders transfer our civilization and learned achievements  to the only people who matter at such a time, our successors; the people we must  instruct or lose the best of who we are. And so I, notoriously brusque and impatient.  resolve to speak to you slowly, with care and thoughtful consideration, but mostly and  above all else with the unvarnished truth, so help me, God.

 A curriculum for young scribblers, things no one but a successful writer can tell  you.

 Every word in this intimate and necessary epistle between the present and the  future which will, and all too soon, be the present some day, is vital. Every word is honest  and such may disconcert and even affront you and your painfully young and ill-informed  ideas. We must both understand that I know far more than you do; a thought you might  not like or even acknowledge...

  ... this could be construed as arrogance and crippling conceit... on your part. It is  certainly insensitive. Still we must both recognize that there is an urgency about our need  to understand each other and a deep fear almost palpable, that I (or any writer of my  generation) shall forget to tell you something of significance or, worse, that having told you  something of such significance, you will not heed it, to the detriment of each generation's  master plan for keeping the whole thing rolling along and of constantly increasing utility and  knowledge.    I now take this opportunity to introduce you to another writer, brilliant lyricist, heart touching  songster, a master poet, hence meticulous word handler. His name is Paul Simon (born  1947), and if you are round about my age (67 this year) you would have grown up with his  shibboleths, whimsies, condescensions, cleverness, never convenient truths, admonitions,  larks and bombastic, hummable moralistic rages all just a radio dial away, always master of  the searing truth so difficult for so many to see and acknowledge, but critical if we are ever  to inhabit the Promised Land, or even find the direction to it, staying thereafter on the adamant  and always challenging path.

 Simon's song "Rewrite" (from the 2011 album "So Beautiful Or So What") should  be required reading (and immediately accessible posting)  by every writer, aspiring or  otherwise. It is about a young writer who confides in the auditor just what his version of  the writer's craft is all about. "Every minute after midnight, all the time I'm spending/ Is just  for workin' on my rewrite, that's right/ I'm gonna turn it into cash."

 But Simon knows, and we elder statespeople of the writer's craft know, that Simon's writer  is delusional. He's not a writer, he is a seeker after big bucks. If he can't conjure what  he needs from "where the father has a breakdown", he'll do it by substituting "a car chase  and a race across the rooftops/ Where the father saves the children and he holds them  in his arms. "This isn't writing." master stylist and writing pioneer Truman Capote once  sniffed. "It's typewriting," that is to say bogus, facile, insincere and superficial.

 If you're destined to be a writer, you must do better, lots better, and  I am doing you the  favor to tell you what that is.

 Memorize the dictionary.

 Your writing is laboriously assembled and crafted from the words you know. The more  words you know and use, the better and more completely you can render human reality...  and, make no mistake about it, that is what all writers do, good, bad, or indifferent. We tell  what happens to humans... everything that happens; their struggles, their dreams, their  aspirations, their love affairs that end in misery, the ones that end in tears and tribulation,  the ones that start in love and end in sublimity and awe.

 Every word we master and use enables us to tell the more complete and accurate  truth about the reality we know and can, in nuanced measure, describe more accurately  once we have the words at our command, when we finally understand what love really  is and can do.

 We can, we must work to do this because it is only when we have the words that  we can even attempt to write the whole truth and nothing but the truth...and, it is only  when we have truth that writing transcends the mundane and allows us to approach God  who is the embodiment of truth and the ultimate destination of every writer whatever  story he tells.

 On your dawning love affair with words... and the truth they reveal and convey.

 How many words do you know today? To the extent  to which you mean to write, the  correct answer is "too few, far too few."  This is not merely a fact; it is a declaration of  immediate commitment and lifelong purpose. If you mean to write, you must here  and now pledge yourself to words, for only then can you succeed in achieving your  objective.

 Thus, pledge yourself to learning just three new words every day.  "Just that?", you say  Yes, just that, which means just this.

 Open the dictionary (whether online or off; I use both).

 Take a 3"x5" card and write the word you have decided to embrace.

 Put it on your tongue, taste it, savor it with the understanding that if you can  incorporate it into your very essence you will be a better person, a smarter person,  a person with yet another puissant tool, the better to achieve your objective, and  ultimately your grand goal. This is how you craft yourself. This is what you must do  to be the world-changing eminence you can become... leaving the rest behind,  those who might have been but without such effort they will never be.

 Now use the word in a sentence or two. Do not just have the word, employ the word.  The actual word and its part of speech should go on one side of the card; its definition  on the reverse. These are now your flash cards. Treat them with the importance they  deserve.

 You have now taken the first step. You have told yourself what you mean to do...  and you have begun to do it. Now continue. If this is your avocation, your mission,  then do it, and it must become your destiny.

 Envoi.

 Too often Paul Simon has come across as sanctimonious, condescending,  hectoring, superior, aloof and dismissive, but not in this song or this album, to  which I listened with the felicity of an open mind and ear. Now in his late  sixties, he sounds like an engaging and completely charming adolescent,  and for that I say, " 'Thank you/ I'd no idea that you were there' pleased to  meet you' ". Go to any search engine and listen to him all over again.


About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over a dozen best selling marketing and business 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.

'I never get a single thing that's new.' An appreciation for America's pack rat, Alex Shear, dead at 73, January 10, 2014, now in God's collection.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

 Author's program note. This is not merely an article. It is instead a declaration  of support and unity for people like Alex Shear (and, yes, me) who are (far)  beyond obsessive in their acquisition of... everything. We have endured snide  comments, ribald jokes, side slapping "humor", ridicule, even the ultimate indignity  of having our closets, cupboards, drawers, basements, garages, and attics  opened and "organized" by the insensitive relations, too often our own mothers  and wives, who claim to love us but do not understand the vital importance of  what we do, why we do it, and our crucial significance in maintaining for future  generations the vital artifacts each of which is an aperture into the lives and times  of those now gone and relying on us to continue their praiseworthy work.

 Today all of us come together not just to bury one of the best of us but to praise  him extravagantly, and (if the whole truth be known) to check out his stuff and  catch a coupla bargains. When's the sale anyway, and could I have a preview?

 Pack rats.

 Considering the fact that I've been called a "pack rat" my entire life, since  my beloved Grammie Victoria Burgess Lauing, laid this monikker on me  as a boy (never mind she evinced similar tendencies herself) I admit to  knowing precious little about them. I mean, if Grammie said I was a pack  rat, simply perusing myself in the mirror should have told me all I needed to  know about the breed, right? Right down to those cute pointed ears which  got me elected "E" in my high school senior class alphabet poll and a picture  of the back of my head in the class book, ears rampant and strikingly apparent.

 Neotoma.

 A pack rat can be any of the species in the rodent genus "Neotoma". They have  a rat-like appearance (keep an open mind, please) with long tails and big black  eyes which are constantly on the look-out for free stuff. They are totally focused on  bringing home this stuff, but it must be up to their discerning standards.

 Thus, when they find something they like (a constant occurrence), they drop what  they are currently carrying and "trade" it for the new thing that has taken their fancy,  the more so if that thing is shiny. These two traits have inspired an anecdote wherein  pack rats find the teller's dime and replace it by two nickels. Yikes, Grammie was right.

 What causes this unrelenting acquisitive behavior anyway?

 Some psychologist at a minor institution of superficial learning is even now finishing  up a study financed by the government on the subject. His conclusion? People become  pack rats because they like having more of what they like, lots more, because more, still  more and yet still more beget radiant happiness and a sense that God loves them best.  Thus, from their earliest moment of recognition that they can have as much as they want,  they set upon the lifelong odyssey of getting it. "I acquire, therefor I am."

 Alex Shear was such a man... and it's time you met him.

 About Alexander Joel Shear.

 Shear was born in Lancaster, PA, March 5,1940, into a mercantile family.  His  mother's family ran a department store in Florida; his father, a grocer turned  toy wholesaler, had tons of stuff that Alex wanted, but couldn't have: yo-yos, Hula- Hoops, Flexible Flyers and a whole lot more of Just What He Had Always Wanted.  "Come on, Dad!" (Champ wheedlers beget champ collectors.)

 After receiving an accounting degree from Franklin & Marshall College in  Lancaster he joined Macy's in New York, where he ran one of the store's  seasonal Christmas shops. There as department store buyer and product  designer he had what he needed for a lifetime of ardent, never-ending accumulation,  a word he preferred to "collector," which he judged with suitable condescension  to be pedestrian.

 The question wasn't whether he'd accumulate. The question was what. And here  he gave himself the maximum latitude, for unlike most collectors who focused  on Victorian toys... or piggy banks... or baseball cards... or matchbook covers...  or cigarette lighters, he focused on everything, so long as everything was  product of the Great Republic and its post World War II material culture, the  genre belittled by so many as kitsch, that is to say a low-brow style of mass-  produced art or design using popular or cultural icons.

 It was also called "tacky", but not by Shear, for he saw beyond the object to the Great  Republic which produced it, its industrious peoples, mores, values and beliefs. It was  he fervently believed throughout his life a window into the soul of the greatest nation on  Earth, the stuff of life, a tangible hedge against the ages to come.

 Thus with his broad, engaging smile, the collector's fine-tuned eye, and a  burning, unquenchable desire to build his astonishing empire, he went out, to  find, to haggle, to acquire, to love and, like every accumulator in the world,  to show off, brag about and overawe lesser beings with his intelligence,  sleuthing procedures, and a luck God had surely bestowed.

 Like others of his ilk, Shear thought big, but he didn't just talk a good game;  he was out early and late winning it. And so he brought back a constant stream  of "I had to have it" treasures which his typical New York apartment just wasn't  designed to accommodate, not remotely commodious enough.

 Thus, he found himself exulting when his wife Betty Blum left him in 1980. It gave  him more space... but of course all seven rooms were used up in an instant. Of  course people, less visionary people, people who didn't understand him one little  bit, told him to slow down, get a grip, stop and savor what he already had. They just  didn't get it... and so he packed 11 storage facilities in three states with the goodies  which were drawn to him like magic.

 These finds included special promotional items from every big corporation  and advertiser you could think of -- Chef Boyardee, Campbell's Soup, Tootsie  Roll, Frito Lay, Coca Cola -- and hundreds of others your taste buds remember  better than you did.

 The odd, the commonplace, the unique, the designs you saw a million times,  and the one you never heard of at all, all made their way to Alex's atelier where  he chirped about what he had found, how he'd suckered its hapless former  owner to "give" it away, a "steal". "American culture is now global culture," he  told the marketing magazine "Promo" in 2000. "And the good news for me is  that I own most of it."

 He wasn't kidding.

 Over the course of five decades and more, Shear acquired and acquired and  when you might have said, "Basta!", he acquired the rest until he had over  100,000 items, in over 120 categories, hidden away. He said he was keeping  them for "The Museum for Regular People", the institution that would memorialize  what he'd done, how well he'd done it, and provide his own pied a terre in the Cosmos.

 At his not-so-old age, Shear might well have had a bundle of productive years  ahead, years when his already mammoth, historic accumulation would have  surged still more. But man proposes, God disposes. And so on a fine winter's  day in Manhattan he was struck by a tour bus. It was an oddly appropriate way  to expire for a man who had become something of a celebrity himself. His  body was then collected by New York officials, who probably didn't know what  a find they had.

 Envoi.

 What will happen to his stupendous haul? No doubt his two sons, William and  Andrew, will decide. I wouldn't bet the ranch on it going to start The Museum for  Regular People. I'd say Sotheby's or Christie's. They know how to turn a parent's  obsession into sibling cash. Thus will his staggering plethora be dispersed in  the usual manner, finding in due course thousands of new homes and dauntless  accumulators.

 As for the music for this article, it could only be "Second Hand Rose", which  Barbra Streisand belted out in "Funny Girl" in 1968. What a lark it would have  been to see La Streisand visit Shear. How they would have liked the visit, both  pieces of grand Americana and brassy show-offs that they were.


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 interesting topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.