Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, November 11, 2023

13

OPINIONOPINION

 Mountain Views News November 11, 2023 

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

STUART TOLCHIN

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta ShambleE

PUT THE LIGHTS ON

FEAR OF CHANGE WARRANTED 
OR UNWARRANTED?


RISKS, REGRETS, RESULTS

 Yesterday while 
playing golf I 
noticed a workman 
behind me 
resting on a cart 
smoking a cigarette. 
He was an 
old guy like me and I joked with him 
about continuing to smoke when everyone 
knows it’s harmful. In fact I 
don’t think players on the course are 
even allowed to smoke. I looked it up 
today and learned that on the PGA 
Tour smoking is not allowed because 
the PGA Tour has a strict policy in 
place to promote a healthy and safe 
environment for everyone. (Are you 
old enough to remember the L&M 
commercial showing Arnold Palmer 
lighting up after he sank a putt?) 
Anyway, the old worker guy surprisingly 
informed me that continuing 
to smoke had saved his life as cigarettes 
were now so expensive that 
he had to find another job to pay for 
them. This new job had relieved him 
of the problem of daily stressing over 
what he should be doing.

 Immediately I thought of my daily 
struggle to fill each day. At night my 
dreams are filled with anxiety and 
confusion. Typically I’m lost at some 
courthouse and not able to find my 
car. I run around looking for someone 
to help and everyone is always too 
busy to even notice me. I am almost 
invisible to them. Eventually I wake 
up wondering where I am but realize 
that it had to be a dream because 
I know I don’t ever to go to Court 
anymore. Fifty plus years of lawyering 
filled with tension and anxiety 
can probably do this. Anyway, we 
all know that feelings of confusion 
and isolation are very common especially 
to older people. Maybe this 
all stems from a refusal to recognize 
and to adapt to changing conditions? 
To quiet fears in this ever-changing 
society people increasingly make use 
of knowingly dangerous addictions 
and psychologically numbing drugs. 
Confrontation with others are feared 
which may result in a forced suppression 
of external emotion and an 
inevitable increased amount of internal 
tension.

 The worker I met on the golf 
course explained that cigarettes have 
become so expensive that after retirement 
he had to get another job 
to pay for his daily habit. He tried 
to quit smoking but that had made 
things even worse. A carton of cigarettes 
now costs almost a hundred 
dollars! Upon hearing this price tag 
it once again hit me how old and out 
of touch I am. As I worried about 
my age the working man proceeded 
to tell me how smoking saved his 
life. His new job at the golf course 
tending to the grounds and relaxing 
and smoking watching others struggling 
with their game. He was not 
the kind of man he explained who 
would “volunteer” and do jobs for 
nothing but now he was happy being 
paid to enjoy his life. For once I held 
my tongue and did not mention that 
he probably would live a shorter life 
no matter how happy he was. Really 
I’m not sure of anything anymore. 
Stress and anxiety and prescribed 
medications probably have as much 
effect on shortening lifespan as does 
smoking.

 My stress in retirement cannot 
be doing me any good but I am not 
about to start smoking or incur additional 
expenses just to force myself 
to get another job. Anyway, who 
would hire me anyway? My ADHD 
has become so noticeable that one 
reader of my articles told me he had 
gotten whiplash just trying to follow 
my thinking. I did not take offence. 
His reaction is much like my own as 
I try to write my articles.

 Yesterday I heard that Hamas 
explained that the October 7th attack 
on Israel was necessitated because Israeli 
negotiations between Israel and 
Saudi Arabia could lead to a peace 
that would therefore threaten the 
identity of Hamas. Hamas continues 
to be a terrorist entity that requires 
war in order to maintain its identity. 
It is an “existential” threat that 
justifies every kind of action. Alas, 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 
uses this kind of existential 
explanation to defend his refusal to 
cease hostility. To him the preservation 
of a welcoming Jewish State justifies 
every kind of action. It would 
be nice to imagine that he just fears 
any kind of change. Think about 
the complaints of the Radical Right 
threatened by changes intended to 
bring about equality. They remarkably 
call this an assault on freedom. 

 I welcome comments from 
anyone even if you complain about 
“whiplash” or abrupt “changes” of 
subject. stuarttolchin@gmail.com. 

Who is considered the greatest player in the history of the National 
Basketball Association (NBA)? Easy! Michael Jordan.

So, what did Mr. Jordan do at the peak of his career? February 7, 
1994? I’ll get to that in a minute. Tough competition! In June of 1991 
Michael helped his team, the Chicago Bulls, win their first (of six) 
NBA titles.

Okay…back to February 7, 1994. Michael Jordan, the most popular athlete on the 
planet and the best player in the NBA, left basketball and signed a contract to play 
baseball (that’s right, I said BASEBALL) for the Chicago White Sox.

The White Sox assigned him to play for their double-A team, the Birmingham Barons. 
Jordan played in 127 games. His batting average for the ’94 season? 202. Not 
good. He did lead his team in…strikeouts lol! Not good either. He was a failure at 
baseball.

A year and a month later, on March 18, 1995 Michael Jordan rejoined the NBA’s 
Chicago Bulls. 10 days later he scored 55 points, the record for the most points 
scored by an opponent at the Madison Square Garden. He played fifteen seasons in 
the NBA, winning six NBA Championships with the Chicago Bulls, six NBA MVP 
awards, 10 NBA scoring titles. In 1988, Jordan became the first NBA player to win 
both the NBA Defensive Player of the Year and the Most Valuable Player award in 
the same year. And as of 2023, Forbes Magazine estimates Michael Jordan’s net 
worth at $3 billion dollars.

Risking failure is a critical element in achieving success. Here’s another example:

In 1968, Spencer Silver, a research chemist for 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) 
was attempting to create a new super-strong super glue. But Spencer 
couldn’t make the glue work right. The objects he glued could easily be peeled off 
leaving no residue or damage. The project was shelved. A failure.

3M, a smart company, has a policy for publishing failures as well as successes in research. 
They made Chemist Silver publish his failure…the glue that wouldn’t stick 
very good. I mean, what good is glue that doesn’t stick?

9 years later, in 1977, someone in another division of 3M came up with an idea 
called “Press and Peel Pads”. The problem these inventors faced was the glue used 
in the pads stuck too good. Test marketing was an unmitigated failure. About to 
shelve the project, someone came across Spencer Silver’s published account of his 
glue failure.

And by 1980 “Post-It Notes” were generating $1 billion a year, hailed as one of 3M’s 
greatest products. As of 2023, more than 50 billion Post-It Notes are produced by 
3M every year!

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success 
when they gave up.” Thomas Alva Edison

“Failure is success in progress.” Albert Einstein

So, dream, risk, take a chance. Just remember this important sequence distinction: 
“Ready, aim, fire”, not “Ready, fire, aim”. “Capeesh?” “Capiche!” 

P.S. “Capeesh” is a correct spelling variation.

And don’t forget about “The Doo Drops” Saturday night, November 18 at Nano 
Café. Doo-wop to Motown! Rock and Roll from the 50’s and the 60’s! Call (626) 
325-3334 for reservations!

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TOM PURCELL

WE NEED A REBIRTH 
OF EMPATHY


When I read a news piece about the passing of longtime 
California senator Dianne Feinstein a few weeks 
ago, some of the comments left at the bottom of the 
online article made me sad. Feinstein suffered a very 
public health decline before she passed.

Anyone with the slightest sense of empathy would 
think “there but for the grace of God go I” — as every 
one of us could suffer a similar decline before our time 
finally comes.

Empathy is in short supply these days, however.

I don’t recall the exact words, but some commenters who disagreed with her 
political positions wrote comments such as “good riddance.” Others used 
derogatory terms that portrayed Feinstein not as a fellow human being but 
as some evil entity whose death was a good thing.

This past weekend, as Hamas gunmen from Gaza invaded Israel, killing and 
assaulting hundreds of civilians, my heart ached for people like Shani Louk, 
a 30-year-old woman who had been attending a dance music festival when 
she was kidnapped and paraded through the streets semi-naked in the back 
of a pickup truck.

My immediate response was incredible compassion for the pain and terror 
this poor woman suffered before she was killed — my heart breaks for her 
and her family.

The immediate response from many others around the world, however, was 
coldhearted and purely political — that her suffering was Israel’s fault because 
the country supposedly had this terrorist attack coming.

Not only do we live in a time in which everything is political all the time, 
we live in a world where people with whom we disagree are no longer seen 
as fellow human beings who have differing thoughts, but as evil entities that 
must be stopped by any means.

Why have our hearts become so much harder? One of the key reasons is the 
way we now receive and process information.

Dr. Helen Riess, author of “The Empathy Effect,” says empathy’s decline has 
to do with social media.

A Street Roots report on her book says “many of the neurological keys to 
feeling empathy are missing from the exchange” when we communicate 
through texts, email and social media posts.

When communicating electronically, not face to face, there’s no chance of 
paying attention to body language and facial expressions — or to make eye 
contact, which is a really important component of empathy.

Psychology Today cites research, published in the journal Computers in Human 
Behavior, that a simple lack of eye contact enables an anonymity that 
fosters rudeness and encourages online trolling. Unfortunately, the magazine 
reports, the era of smartphones and social media — of nasty tweets and 
Facebook insults — is making rudeness “our new normal.”

Riess continues that without emotional cues that we can see, we’re left with 
only words (and images) on a screen, which leads to detachment and creates 
emotional indifference.

An increasing number of people treat those with whom they disagree this 
way — which contributes to the general decline of empathy in our civil discourse. 
Though Riess says empathy is being blunted, she emphasizes to 
Forbes that it can be learned.

Her thinking is seconded by an interesting New York Times article that 
identifies specific actions we can all take to restore empathy in our own 
hearts.

The simple truth is that we need to stop hiding behind our electronic devices 
and actively engage with people face-to-face. We need to set politics 
aside now and then to embrace our common humanity — and relearn how 
to sympathize with suffering when humans are at their worst.

Tom Purcell is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him 
at Tom@TomPurcell.com.


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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com