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People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be applied to any person who breaks established conventions. On the other hand people who revere or venerate religious images are called iconodules in a Byzantine context, or iconophiles. Today many iconoclasts, outside the religious context are popular or revered.

In the modern era do you know how an iconoclast thinks and operates?  Do you realize that people who are iconoclasts are prone to accomplish great feats even when everyone told them that they couldn’t?  The brain of an iconoclast works different than those of regular folks. They have the ability to allow the brain to not fill in the empty holes of their subconscious  with stuff they have already seen or experienced. In other words  the brain stores memories of past experiences, and fills in the blanks of our perception when we are dealt with making decisions. All our bad habits are created as a result of filling our brain with wrong messages. This is why advertising works.

Check out my review of  Iconoclast, A neuroscientist reveal how to think Differently, David Berns . This book will unveil the science behind how some of our great thinkers and leaders have been able to be so successful.

Passion. One often thinks of passion in a sexual context. Our society, so obsessed,  often takes words like passion and gives it reputation that perhaps is not deserving. Take the word socialist. Today, if you are a Democrat and support the policies of the current President,  you are a Socialist with a capital “S”. But  do we really know what a socialist is, represents and desires? Do you know that when the word “bureaucrat” was first coined it was and meant a good thing? Today, it is automatically connected with something negative. So what does the word Passion mean?  Passion according to one definition means  “an emotion, a strong feeling about a subject or person, usually of intense desire and attraction.”

Illinois State University, my Alma mater and a sound higher education institution in Illinois growing in reputation, has recently undertaken a major change in how they market their college. They have made a major effort, like many companies do, and in fact are natural for them, to create a common marketing language. Have you heard an alum from Ohio State University discuss their school? I’m sorry, I meant to say “The Ohio State University”. Yes the word “the” when they mention their school name is part of the marketing and branding effort. At ISU we (I serve on the Alumni Board, hence “we”) are now supposed to emphasize Illinois STATE University, with the tag line of  “STATE your Passion”.

What is your Passion? Asking that question reminded me the other day, when filling out a questionnaire asking me what my hobbies were. I am ashamed to say, I have no real hobbies. I don’t collect anything, I don’t do any art or crafts, I don’t rebuild cars or steam engines or have model trains. Even though, I think I am an interesting person. Then I realized, I read, and more importantly, I guess my most interesting hobby is writing, and in particular most lately, a blog. I have a hobby!

But what is my passion? What one activity, subject, person  do I have a passion for.  I believe I have several. Making sure our organization (Economic Development Council) is doing the very best for our community and the clientele we serve is a passion of mine. But honestly, that is too easy. And frankly, having your job, something you get paid for be your passion is cheating. I may be passionate in the way I carry out my duties, but I can’t honestly say It’s my passion. I am passionate about my children’s success, but I think they call that love or meddling,  a fine line for sure.

What is your passion. I would like to hear from you. Let me know what is your passion. Let’s talk amongst ourselves. Let’s see where this can lead us.

In 1995, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the occupation of Latvija, I went to visit. On the ride from the airport to my hotel I was struck by the old dilapidated buildings and the shoddy “public housing” built or hardly maintained by the Soviets during the fifty some years they occupied Latvija. But the other thing I took notice of was as we drove past an old pre-World War I apartment buildings closer to the inner city would be little old ladies hunched over with a broom one would associate with a witch, very woody, branch-like, sweeping the sidewalk, but more often the curb or part of the street in front of the building I assumed was her home. I would think that even in post-communist Latvija, this type of “service” would be taken care of by a government agency. I was intrigued by the idea that perhaps out of a sense of some type of social duty or at the minimum, some pride what seemed like an 80 year old women felt compelled to sweep the sidewalk and curb in front of her building.

Fast forward to the present day. Recently I watched a man in my neighborhood prepare his yard for mowing. Suffice to say, I can see this man’s yard from my front porch which I so enjoy sitting on watching the world go by. He prepares his yard by first removing the downspouts that stick out onto his lawn. He then walks through the yard looking for foreign objects. Aha! He found one, a branch from a nearby tree. The branch is obviously too big for his lawn mower to go over, and oh, what this? It is too big for his garbage can too, because he throws it into the street! I tried not to use an exclamation point here, but it hard not to.

I know what you are saying, I am overreacting. Maybe I am, but the action my neighbor took epitomizes what I think is often an issue in our society. The idea, that I don’t have to worry about anything outside my own little world. I work, I pay my taxes, contribute to society, and all you (me) our anybody else can do is leave me alone. But I ask you, what happens to that stick, or grass clippings, or any other debris I push off my property onto someone else’s, onto public property. Who’s problem is that? Who is going to pay for your stick multiplied thousands of times by the thousands of people who think like my neighbor.

People complain constantly about taxes. They say the “government” (which by the way is not some disembodied ethereal spirit floating around, its you and me pardner), needs to cut back and spend what it takes in revenue. No more. You often hear people say, “When my revenue (salary) diminishes, I have to cut back, so should government”. Agreed. How should they do it. Because what is often the case, is that while people are talking out of one side of their mouth saying they want less government, on the other side of their mouth they are asking for better services and sometimes more. Can we cut back on taxes and the cost of maintaining services if we pick up sticks?

That stick, branch, lawn clippings, etc. are real objects. It has mass and is made up of atoms and molecules. It will not dissolve when it hits the street. It has to go somewhere. Where will it go. Let’s examine the options.

Option 1: It gets run over by numerous cars and sticks until it is crushed into a million piece, gets washed down the storm sewer and ends up clogging a drain pipe, along with the thousands other pieces of little debris people have thrown into the street (not to mention the millions and millions of cigarette butts smokers think are innocent little pieces of debris), as harmless as it might seem.

Option 2: A sudden gust of wind picks up our stick/branch and sends it into someone else’s yard or property (perhaps mine). It’s unsightly, and is know backed up against my fence. Now I have to deal with it. Should I throw it into the street? Maybe it will blow back?

In either case my neighbor has decided it will not be his problem and it will be someone else’s. If we all acted that way, the costs of everything will increase. The “it’s not my problem it’s yours” attitude will end up being everyone’s problem. We all pay the cost of not taking care of each other, not respecting our neighbors property, pushing the cost of everything into the future. Everything.

Take some time this week caring about how you treat the world around you. The stick in your yard is YOUR stick. It doesn’t belong in the city street, it doesn’t belong anywhere but under the careful care of you. in our town, if you collect a whole bunch of sticks and put them at the curb on Wednesday night, the Town will pick them up on Thursday morning thereby assuring they will not blow into the street. I’d say that is fairly proactive on their part.

Maybe we should be more like the Latvijan grandma’s from 1995. Pick up our own sticks lest they blow somewhere else and become someone else’s problem. Are there other so-called sticks we aren’t taking care of in our society? Think about it and I’m sure you can come up with examples.

I just listened to Steven D. Levitt, author of the book  Freakonomics along with his co-author Stephen Dubner. Levitt was a speaker at Illinois State University’s “Speakers Series”. What a great opportunity we have in this community to hear world renown thinkers and authors.  Not every community our size has a University that attracts people like Levitt. It made me think about our situation in Bloomington-Normal (or “BN”). We really have it uncommonly good. There are some real thinkers in this community and some people that can get things done. How is that some communities thrive and others don’t. Having worked in a few I offer these suggestions:

1. We have and have had some strong community leaders in BN. The current and former Mayors of Normal have led the community in developing a plan and then executing the plan to redevelop downtown Normal (now renamed Uptown). It would have been easy to say “it won’t work, and have the Mayor and City Council cave in. But they haven’t. And even though some people criticize their efforts at every turn, Uptown Normal is becoming a showcase and the epitome of how to undertake redevelopment in an urban core. It took guts, fortitude and daring to be a leader, and it takes a city council to trust a professional staff they have hired to provide the recommendations and make sure the plan is executed.

2. 

   Kenny Chesney

   Across town the coliseum was packed with Kenny Chesney fans tonight . This Country singer sold out the entire place in three minutes. The former Mayor Judy Markowitz and city council members were determined to get the place built. They did and now we have some good opportunities for concerts, indoor football, and a whole host of other activities. Was it the right size, place, and management? Only time will tell, but it adds value and quality of life to the community.

3. ISU Athletics is not necessarily known for powerhouse teams, but we do have our share of success. The current leadership  of Dr. Sheahon Zenger has made ISU athletics more valid. Twenty-five years ago when I graduated from ISU, if they filled half the parking lot for the football game they counted themselves lucky. Today one has to get to the parking lot early and this year they are charging for $5.00 per car to tailgate.  Now we just need some wins in the football and some tournament success in basketball and people will start coming around.

These are just a few. We need to train more leaders and let people know it’s ok to step out into uncharted territory once in a while. That is how things get done. Normal and Bloomington will continue to grow, but leaders have to be willing to step into the fray once in a while, get scuffed up and come out the other end. If they don’t, nothing will get accomplished.  What do you think?

I had a great conversation the other night with my close friend about Social Media, social networks, and the  the growth of this industry, sector, or whatever you want to call it. I have been lucky enough to have the interest and time to  immerse myself in the  nuances of this interesting and fun phenomena. There is a lot of things going in the world of social media and I am convinced that social networks and social media are changing the way we communicate. No longer are we telling people about how and what we do, today we are forced to listen as well. And if we aren’t, or if you aren’t you should be. That is the impact of social networking, media, or whatever you want to call it.

I just read Groundswell by  Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This is a book that I think is a must-read. You are going to see a lot of people writing a lot of books about social media, but these authors are to be believed. They are researchers at Forrester Research and they  have really hit it on the head. This book will give  businesses a step-by-step process in developing  a strategy for social media. One thing I really like is their categorizing of the type of people who are using the internet and social media. Using this categorizing, one can determine which tool to use. Here are the categories:

• Creators — online consumers who at least once a month publish a blog or article online, maintain a Web page or upload video or audio onto sites like YouTube. These people represent 18 percent of the online adult population.
• Critics — react to online content by posting reviews and comments and participating in and editing wikis. Twenty-five percent of adult Americans online are critics.
• Collectors — save URLs, tags and social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. They vote for their favorite sites and use RSS feeds. Collectors make up 12 percent of the adult population online.
• Joiners — participate or maintain profiles on a social networking site like Facebook. Twenty-five percent of adults who are online in the United States are now on Facebook. In South Korea, the participation rate is 40 percent.
• Spectators — the largest percentage of adults online in the United States. This category consumes what everyone else creates. It requires less effort and makes up 48 percent of users.
• Inactives — forty-one percent of all Americans online remain untouched by the groundswell. And, of course, those offline are merely watching TV or reading a good book.

Understand these categories and you will understand how to use the tools that are available. Read my review on our regular website for a quick review of the book, or better yet buy the book.

On more than one occasion we have had what one might describe as a funny call from a local would-be entrepreneur who asks this question: “I want to start a business, and uuhh, I was wondering, what do people need, I mean, you know,  what kind of business should I start”? Now, far be it for me to be critical of an entrepreneur, no matter what their stripes. Courage is the first trait required of the  entrepreneur. Courage to pick up the phone and make that call and ask that question. So kudos to you for calling.

My answer has been, “what is you passion, what do you do well, what can you offer the marketplace that no one else can nor can do it better than you…that is what you should do and the type of business you should be in”.  It is that simple. It is great that you want to start a business, and it is really cool that you thought enough to call me, but YOU have to come up with the idea. Don’t call me and ask. Your market or product due diligence should start at the library or on the c0mputer, not at your local small business development center or economic development office.

Figure out your passion, your “business” reason for living, and then pursue it with everything you’ve got!

Today is the the day we launch our new EDC Website blog. You can find it at www.bnbizmore.com. it will be filled with more of the great information and data you get from the EDC. In it you will see blog posts from our staff on various issues that confront economic development and small business. You might find pieces about what it takes to get a small business loan from Ken Springer the manager of our loan programs. Or Brooke Weishaupt, our Director of Communications  may include some information on how best to use social media in a small business setting.

John Schirano, the manager of our Business Retention program BIZBAM, will be providing articles about the wide variety of tools that business can use in the community to  grow or expand their business in Bloomington Normal.  And from time to time we will have other staff members, board members, investors and friends contribute an article at this site.

We want you to  to consider uploading video, posts or other items to this blog site. We want interactivity, we want to listen to what people have to say about the EDC and we will respond. Check it out and consider it a stop on your daily web browsing activities.

I was a political science major and I think I understand how government works or in some cases doesn’t work. I also have, over the course of my career seen many case of how private business works and sometimes doesn’t work. I have even seen cases where a business has succeeded even with the owners doing just about everything one could think of to ruin it. On the other side I have seen well operated businesses fail for no uncertain reasons, usually bad timing. So what does this tell us? One thing this should tell us is that certainty in anything is “uncertain”.

Nothing is ever black or white. There are often shades of gray. And a large part of that nuance is that people view their world from their perspective not yours or mine.  So what seems very clear to you may not be so clear to someone else. Now, some things may be more certain than others, but it’s been noted that eye-witnesses can differ in what they saw even when they were standing in the same room or have watched the same event unfold.

So where am I going with this? All the noise from the healthcare debate, or shouting match as it may be is really the truth seen by two different sides of the issue. One side sees the truth one way and the other sees the truth, plain as day the other. Generalizations or pronouncements are always dangerous. Here are some that I have heard:

• “The private sector and the free-market is the best arena in which to provide health care. Give them less regulation and more freedom and we will all get healthcare at the right price”.

• “Government should not be involved in health care because anytime government gets involved in something it screws it up”.

These are two statements from opposing sides of the debate I have heard made. If you just read those statements by themselves, spent some time really trying understanding the issues raised in each statement, and did a little thinking, research, and digging, you would probably come to the conclusion that they cannot stand alone, they are not true on their face, and they are shaded gray.

Is it too difficult to ask that we merely review our statements before we make them, or give some real thought to what we hear? If you hear a statement like those above, you are really not looking at reality, because neither is totally true.  What do you think?

No this is not a story from the Bible. But is a real life battle between two powerhouses of the urban frontier that occured in the later half of the  20th century in New York City. This cage match  pitted Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses.

I own a copy of the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities,by Jane Jacobs. This classic book relates to the

reader the great value that neighborhoods bring to a city. The author describes what the vital urban vibration is and why it is important even to those who live in suburbia. Jane Jacobs made her mark as a writer and critic of Cities. Born in Scranton, she ended moving to Toronto, Canada and died there in  2006. Starting  in New York City, she became famous for opposing modern expressways that would cut through the vital neighborhoods of a city. Her common theme was to question just who a city is for, cars or people?  Her value to the discussion of urbanism was evidenced in February 2007  when the  Rockefeller Foundation announced the creation of the Jane Jacobs Medal, “to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban design, specifically in New York City.

In an article by in the New Republic called  What a City Needs, Edward Gleaser  the Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard and the director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston writes about Jacobs fight with the great king of infrastructure, Robert Moses, and how eventually Jacobs, became a saint, while Moses ended up being vilified and scorned for doing what he though was right and what modern planning and urban design methods required at the time (1960s), a city built for cars.

I am really very fortunate that I came across this article, because I have to admit, while I own a copy of the book, I have not read it. I have started it at least three times, and I sit and type this, I want to pull it off the shelf, ride a bus or bike downtown, park myself in a coffee shop and start reading it again.  I would look all urban and hip. However the article kinda sums it up for me and I have to admit that while I appreciate the need for infrastructure, I feel for and usually fall on the side of thinking that Jane Jacobs espouses.

Read the article and if you can handle it, read the book. Find out why people are so passionate about their downtown, and why it makes sense to have a public policy that supports these sometimes dirty, funky, yet vibrant parts of our cities. Downtown are our soul and inner core of our communities. A real urban core functions like a living breathing organism, where physiological systems take care of  all the work that needs to be done.

Don’t give up on the urban core. If you do the disease of apathy will spread to the suburbs. It will get you.

I am sitting in my living room writing this on my computer. My computer is running off  a battery embedded in the recesses of this machine, and my interent connection is being obtained through a wireless modem sitting in the other room. I can hear the kids from the local school across the street being picked and waklking home. It is a perfect late summer day, puffy white clouds, blue skies, and temperature about 75 degrees.

Listining to those kids walking home makes me think about my own childhood and the huge movement in the advance of technology. Those kids walking home have never grown up without computers, cell phones, cable television, and whole host of  other technological advantages. They will undoubtedly expereince even more advances in technology as they get older.  Maybe their children won’t have to walk to school in the future, perhpas they can holographically insert themselves digitally in the classroom while staying in the confines of their home (or pod).

Today, it looks like we can get power, or electricity wirelessly. It sounds crazy, even unsafe, but apparently works. Check out this video below:

I hope this technology becomes commercialized and available soon.  It may put the extension cord industry out of business.

September 2, 2009 11:22 am

I am living the dream, writing this to you in my pajamas. As posted, I got back last night from my version of the Great American Road Trip. Here are ten general observations about the trip. I have some more specific things to write  I thought about during those long rides between destinations, but those  will come later.

1. You cannot be bored if you like to observe. When I drive, particularly when I drive somewhere I have never been before, everything is new. The trees, the roadside, the way the road looks, the crops, farms, cows, other cars, towns, you name it.
2. In Middle America it seems two things dominate the radio dial in the area of public radio and the AM dial, classical music and religious talk radio. I always try to find an NPR station and it seems that most of the public radio station in the states I drove through (see previous blog posts) played classical music. Very few play jazz and blues  which what my home town public radio station provides (WGLT—News, Blues and all that Jazz). It is very enjoyable to drive down the highway surrounded by sunflower fields listening to classical music. If one prefersthe AM dial, one can listen to all types of mostly Christian radio sermons. Most are decent messages of love and accommodation, but once in a while you get someone who will mix in a little bit of everything, from healthcare to immigration, to nuclear proliferation and prophesy. I tend to turn the station at this point.
3. Speaking of cows, I saw a lot of cows. I am more accustomed to seeing dairy cows. I think most of these are beef cattle. Many were eating in the pastures. Two thoughts I had: First, spending you entire life with your neck bent eating all day would be a real pain (in the neck)? One rarely sees a cow looking up. Or looking at each other. Do cows look at each other, or are the eating all the time. Second, I thought all the cows west of the Mississippi are corn fed in big feed lots?
4. There a number of Turnpikes in Oklahoma. We call them “Tollways” in Illinois. It seems to me user fee based roads have a future. You drive on the road, you pay. You don’t, and you don’t pay. I think I will write about this in the future.
5. Water storage tanks in Kansas, and Oklahoma are tall and skinny. In the Midwest they look like mushrooms, skinny in the stem and bulbous on the top. These Great Plains water towers look like missile silos. Wait, maybe they are missile silos disguised to be water towers. Mowahahahahah (invoke evil laugh)!
6. One always sees the 1^st Baptist church, and the 2^nd Baptist Church, but one rarely sees the 3^rd, 4^th, of 5^th Baptist Church (or any denomination you might like). Why is that? Are there not enough Baptists? Is there an ecumenical law against going beyond the 2^nd church in many denominations? Except for Fifth Third Bank you don’t see banks doing that either. I am going to start the 12th Lutheran Church in Bloomington-Normal. That will really throw people off. Also what if the 2^nd goes under or ceases to exist and one wants to start a new one, do you have to go to 3 or does one name it the “Second 2^nd Baptist Church”?
7. Driving through the countryside particularly in remote areas is a Zen-like experience. You experience nothingness. Unless of course someone veers into your lane (see the “Driving Drama”  post).

8. 

   Blue Eye, Arkansas School Group, 1939

   There are a lot of odd names of towns in the USA. Out west many are derived from native American languages, others are just plain weird, different, and interesting. One must ask, “what were they thinking when they named these places”? Examples: Bloomer, Range, Hasty, Erdahl, Melby, Downer, Marvin, Bruce, White, Spink, Gayville, Soldier, Salix, Beebeetown, Craig, Agency, Healing Springs, Garfield, and my favorite, Blue Eye.

9. I had possibly the best pulled pork sandwich I have ever had at the Gas ‘n Grub in Oak Grove, Arkansas. Oak Grove probably has about 50 residents, and I stopped because I was getting hungry and thirsty. It smelled good inside and looked clean.  Elmer, (the retired farmer; that is what I decided to name him) was sitting quietly in the corner drinking coffee and the young girl behind the counter took my order. In terms of customer service she said practically nothing, but she was all business. And although it took about 15 minutes to complete my order, it was worth the wait. And by the way they need to change the name to Grub ‘n Grub, for the gas pumps are no longer in operation. My guess is that it would be too costly to upgrade to the digital pumps everyone is using. They still had the old mechanical pumps, for those of you who know what I am talking about.
10. I averaged about 29 miles to the gallon in my six cylinder Toyota. Also, every state but Illinois has gotten the clue and on long stretches of road where there is very little traffic and limited access via on-ramps the speed limit was either 70-75 mph. Even country roads were 65 mph. With increased speed I still had great gas mileage.

So either I am a moron, or a genius driving  through 10 states in 5 days. In my case I accomplished my goal. I have one more state to get to in the continental United States: West Virginia.  I think I will do it over a long weekend in Fall. Any suggestions?

I view the trip and my observations somewhat like the execution of performance art, particularly since I was able to share it with you. Driving while thinking about what I needed to write about later in the evening gave me a different perspective. While I am generally observant, I needed to think about what I needed to say. I hope you enjoyed my posts about my trip as much as I did experiencing it.  Tomorrow I am back to my regular schedule.

Well I made it home. If anyone was paying attention, I was supposed to spend the night in Springfield Missouri, not Columbus as indicated in my last post. Well, I spent the night in neither place, because by the time I got to Springfield at 4:00 in the afternoon, I wasn’t ready to spend another night in a bed that I wasn’t familiar with. So I sped home. I was actually home by about 10:00, but by the time I put everything away and turned the computer on, it was almost 11:00. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed and having an extra day to do nothing. Hooray.

I left Tulsa about 9:00 this morning and spent most of the day on little back roads and the hills of Northwest Arkansas. It was a really fun drive. It wasn’t until about 3:00 in the afternoon did I hit an interstate. A will put up a post later with some final thoughts and ideas. For know, it’s a  goodnight.

I am in Northwest Arkansas. I am truthfully quite shocked. I didn’t realize the level of development here. My guess is that most,  if not all of it comes from the growth of WalMart. I had a heck of a time finding a coffee place that isn’t a Starbucks. Not that I dislike Starbucks, but I need access to free internet. My only beef about Starbucks, is that it charges for internet access. I am sitting in a place called Cafe Baristo in Rogers, AK  with the intent of checking a few emails when I thought I would try to type my thoughts.  An now, I am trying to sit her and not kill the lady venting and raging about what is wrong with California, immigration, banking, manufacturing, churches, New Orleans, Charter Schools,  Scotland and Terrorists (she just announced she will never visit Scotland), baking soda, P.F. Changs, traffic intersection design, etc. Hey Lady, you are not the only one in here! Please tone it down, no one wants to hear your fascist views anyway.

Just a quick word on customer service. I hate it when you walk into a locally owned place, and its obvious you are not local. In this place I just walked in, the manager was at the cash register (customer side) with a friend/customer who the two barsitas seemed to be familiar with, and they were having a long conversation about what they were going to order. They saw me come in, they did not greet me, they didn’t speed up the ordering process, nor was there any concern about what I might need. The manager proceeded to sit down with the customer, get on our cell phone and in a loud voice proceed to argue with someone on the phone; loudly.

I am invisible. no one knows I am here. The manager has not done any “work” in the twenty minutes I have been here. Five people, four of them employees have managed to keep the noise level so loud that it barely makes it comfortable.  Cute place but not very warm.

Ok, am I overreacting? a little maybe. I guess I am going on first impressions. If I lived here, or was visiting for an extended period , I would not come back.  I feel the manager and staff are not intentionally focused on the customer and not are more interested in talking about their social lives and all the topics above.

It’s almost noon, let’s see how they do with more customers, if indeed there are some. As of 12:01, it’s jut me and loudmouth.

Note: Ms. Loudmouth had just touched on California’s budget problems and immigration while I was sitting down. All the other topics that are in bold I added as I sat here and listened to her jabber on! Honestly, she really did talk about all those topics.

August 31, 2009. 8:50 pm

Day 3 of my Great American Road Trip. It is hard to believe that just yesterday I was in Fargo, North Dakota, a much different place than where I am tonight, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oklahoma is my second target state on this trip. The last one, Arkansas will be tomorrow. I won’t stay overnight in the Razorback state, but merely pass through the northeast corner of the state. I will be very near the home of the largest corporation in the United States, Wal-Mart in Bentonville. Tomorrow, like today will be spent mostly on local roads.

I really enjoyed driving on the local roads today. The reason I did this was because the most direct route between Kansas City and Tulsa was a two lane road. Route 169 got me there to here. On a back road one gets to pass through the small towns and villages of America. The road I took went past the birthplace of John Brown, the famous abolitionist from Johnson County, Kansas. I also passed through the birthplace of Will Rogers, the famous humorist and writer in Oologah, Oklahoma.

Southeast Kansas is a pretty area. However the land doesn’t look like it is being used for anything useful. I don’t know if the soil I poor, or if the farmers are poor, but the area looked bleak.  The road I was on was heavily used with a lot of truck traffic.  It reminded me of traveling between Rockford and Normal in the years I was going to ISU. I would get stuck behind a big truck or some slow driver would have difficult time passing, and it would make trip that much longer.

This morning I wasn’t sure that I would be writing this post tonight. As I was driving, I saw a red car approaching. The road was smooth and wide in this area and I was going about 70 mph. Without warning, the red car veered directly into my lane about what seems to be about a quarter mile away. Not a little bit, but directly head-on in my lane. Without even thinking, I jerked the steering wheel handle to the right and found myself going 70 miles per hour in the gravel shoulder, while the red car passed on my left and found my back end beginning to slide to the right. With the mile marker sign approaching and about to clobber my car, I jerked to the left and found my back end back on the pavement but know skidding to the left. As if I was driving in the snow, I quickly jerked the wheel back to the right again to compensate for my slide and slighty tapped on the brakes. I had not touched the brakes yet, because I didn’t want to hit something in the pavement and go flipping over, which I feared was going to happen any minute Fortunately there was not another car in front of me because I ended up in the left lane rolling slowly when all the flying around was over. By this time my heart was pounding, and I was breathing hard. I have never even come close of being in such a major accident like this. I drove another 30 yards and pulled over. I felt I needed to just stop, take a few big breaths, and relax for second. One of the cars behind me and probably witnessed the whole thing rolled by at a reduced speed, and for a second I thought they were going to stop, but they didn’t. Fearing that there might be something wrong with my car, after what I put it through, I got out and checked it, but it looked like it was in fine shape. I got back in the car and rolled on, looking at every car approaching with much greater wariness then a few minutes before. I didn’t know if the other driver was distracted, was texting, playing games or just goofing around. So much for the quaintness of back roads.

As I was going through that harrowing experience, all I could think of was regaining control of my car and making it stop without major violence. While it was happening, I really didn’t feel anything and afterword I was just glad I was ok. I couldn’t even bring myself to feel mad at the idiot who veered in my lane. A little further down the road, I started thinking about how quickly lives change. If I had not been paying attention, I could not have made the evasive move I made. It would have likely been a head-on collision, one that is hard to imagine surviving. One minute you’re a driving the next minute…

I made it to Tulsa about 3:00 and relaxed. Tulsa is a big city! All I know about Tulsa before I got here was, well, nothing. Tulsa felt big as I drove around it. It had a skyline, and interstate’s and bypasses. Tulsa is also the home of the University of Tulsa, which played basketball in the Missouri Valley Conference back in the eighties. At the time they had this loud brash coach that wore huge lapel polka-dot shirts when they came to play the redbirds of ISU in the old Hancock field house. That coach, Nolan Richardson, went on to coach Arkansas and take them to four Final Fours and beating Duke for the national championship in one of the games.

One more target state, and two more states to get home. I’m driving through Arkansas tomorrow with an overnight in Columbus, Missouri. Be home soon!