Before going further, look at the number once more: One Hundred and Fourteen.
He lived a hair over thirty of those years in an assisted living facility, and nearly another quarter century as a widower of the late Mrs. Agnes Breuning (with whom Walter is once again strolling along with in the valley of still waters after that 54-year separation). But he was apparently still very active, at least mentally, until the very end. Along the way he picked up a few insights that are worth expounding upon as careful consideration for how we all should live our lives.
On Change:
Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. "Every change is good . . . I think every change that we've ever made, ever since I was a child — 100 years — every change has been good for the people . . . My God, we used to have to write with pen and ink, you know, (for) everything. When the machines came, it just made life so much easier."
Keep in mind that Mr. Breuning was a 50-year employee of the railroad . . . as a clerk. We are not speaking of Walter Breuning, CEO, whose ground-breaking innovations during his tenure carried an industry from Point A to Point B.
Mr. Breuning, after his career had ended, saw the industry shunt along in a mindless limp, following the pathways forseen by Harvard economist, Professor Theodore Levitt, in his paper on Marketing Myopia. That is, when an industry fails to see its potential outside of a narrow scope, it eventually dies, whether theoretically or in the literal sense.
Mr. Breuning watched many friends lose their positions, and perhaps their pensions as well, because the industry failed to embrace change. The majority of those friends probably died embittered at the thanklessness of the corporate executives and their short-sightedness on making channge work for the industry. But Walter Breuning championed the concept around change. Look where it got him . . . health and happiness for 114 years.
Yet, how many people do we all know (some of us stare back at those people in the mirror) who wring their hands and tremble at the thought of trying something, anything, that is new or unfamiliar. I used to be that way about some foods, or social interaction. Some people are that way with computers or electronic technology of any kind. "Oh, that is too complicated. How do you play music on that tiny thing called an iPod?" "The same way generations went from vinyl discs to 8-Track tapes to cassette tapes to compact discs." Change is good!
And how many of those people who fret over change deny themselves of a long life? A helluva lot more than the one who lived to be 114 years old.
On Death:
"We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die."
Here was a man who seemingly cheated the Grim Reaper for a long, long time, albeit in an unspectacular fashion . . . just going day-to-day, putting one pants leg on at a time, putting one step in front of the other. But he did it for 114 years.
Years ago when my Mother turned 40 I overheard her tell a cousin that it was "the darkest day of my life." I was 13, and remember thinking, "And the alternative to turning 40 is . . .?"
Mom, who for years has followed my Dad around like a lap dog, is now a mindless soul of 77. She has not excercised her brain for quite a few years and depends on my Dad to tell her what she cannot do, implying she is not smart, or capable, enough.
She is a Christian woman whose eternal destiny is secured by her faith in Jesus Christ. Yet, if asked about death, she would probably cringe and begin to harbor thoughts about dying as if she were one of only a few persons who will ever die.
On a Healthy Diet:
Eat two meals a day. Mr. Breuning said his good health was due to this strict diet.
"That's all you need. How many people in this country say that they can't take the weight off? I tell these people, . . . 'Get on a diet and stay on it. You'll find that you're in much better shape, feel good.'"
But here in America, especially in Beans-and-Cornbread Country, we shovel more food down our throats at one meal than Mr. Bruening did in two meals . . . then we add one more meal and usually a midnight snack.
How in the hell are we supposed to maintain a healthy weight and high energy for many years with that extreme gluttony--a characteristic that is highly frowned upon in the Bible.
And how many shortened life spans result from the grandiose gorging? One man lived to be a lucid, lively 114 years old by avoiding that demon. That man was Walter Breuning.
Work as long as you can:
"That money's going to come in handy. Don't retire until you're darn sure that you can't work anymore. Keep on working as long as you can work and you'll find that it's good for you."
With this nugget I take a half exception . . . but only one-half. I believe work is the life force that keeps the American ideals going strong. It pushes people to do their part, and a wee bit more. Then someone else picks up the baton and does the same.
But that doesn't mean we should, at some point, not consider backing off and exploring more options. I am not talking about quitting a career, retiring to a couch, and wait for the drooling to start.
Nothing says you have to slave 40 hours a week until the day you cannot slave any more. But you should continue meaningful living until the day you die.
There were two more ideals that he did not leave the interviewers with a quote: One was to maintain a simple life. Another was to eschew the myth that owning a home is part of the American Dream.
The two actually go together in a way, although I imagine for most of Mr. Breuning's working life the idea of home ownership was more palpable than the travesty created by the current financial products industry.
Still, considering that Mr. Breuning owned only a small parcel of land briefly around the onset of the Great Depression, being a renter did not stop him from a long and healthy life.
How many strokes or heart attacks or aneurysms are caused when people get too involved in keeping up with the Jones to keep up with their health? How many suicides can also be attributed to such fallacy. Let's not begin with the slow-death diseases that eat away at people silently for too many years until it is too late.
I'm not suggesting that Mr. Breuning had all of the answers, only 93.5 percent of them. And even if someone can live such a life on the fringes of austerity, there is no guarantee that Mr. Reaper won't push them out if front of a bus before they turn 40.
But what a great beacon Mr. Breuning gave us to use.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
A Hell of a Life
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Do Cyclists Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes?
It is a fair and interesting question. And, should anyone of Cyclist Nation be queried on their thoughts, having a solid answer would at least quell the cacophony of non-cyclists (whose vocal minority would readily lash out in anger over sharing their roads with cyclists) and provide us all with a bit of blessed silence. Yet, it may also be an exercise in futility to direct an answer of the inquiry to those folks. Give an idiot a voice and you give them an avenue to express their lack of intelligence.
The answer, although it could be dissected and discussed in many ways, is relatively simple: Taxes, regardless of their intent, are taxes; and any single tax dollar collected, regardless of the taxing authority, is no more, or no less, of a tax dollar than any other tax dollar.
Skeptics might counter with some argumentative drivel about highway taxes being different and use the rationale that they are more user-fee related than other taxes. But the supporting documentation is so easy to understand that it can be used by a blind man to shoot holes in biases the strength of a wet paper bag.
Although I own a KIA Sportage, as a cyclist I intend to hit the roads for an average of thirty-five hundred bicycle miles per year over the next twenty years (to attain a personal cycling goal). My cycling intentions do not eliminate the fact that a portion of my taxes will go to fund federal, state, and local road projects (or given the notorious history of public graft, pad the wallets of corrupt highway politicos).
Cyclists who do not own or use an automobile
Even if I did not own a car, I still use public transit for the brunt of my daily commute and have no qualms at using the same venue for non-work related travel. The principal source that fuels public transportation budgets are General Fund tax dollars. Where do those tax dollars come from? The primary sources are sales taxes, privilege taxes for entertainment purposes, and professional privilege taxes that are masked within a service fee (such as for dry cleaning, medical services, etc.). Residents of Metropolitan Davidson County proper can add property taxes to the stew.
(I’m using this municipality as an example since a) it is the closest major metropolitan center to me and, 2) such municipalities are where you will find the greatest number of non-auto owning cyclists, unless you consider a city like Davis, CA, which has more bicycles than cars.)
However, no matter where the roads are, there is an abundance of General Fund tax dollars in play. Consider a few of the General Fund services that, without these services available to every citizen, no modern society could function:
Taking another angle, for my anticipated 3500 miles road impact costs will be about $17.50 annually. How much sales tax, though, will be generated from sustenance purchases necessitated by the energy expended? Anywhere from two-to-ten times more, depending on where the taxes are collected and the nature of the rides (whether it is a hard, dehydrating, summer midday workout-type ride or a leisurely, spring evening jaunt will make a difference in what my re-energizing needs are). As well, I can guarantee a non-cyclist that my bicycle will need quite a few repairs and replacement parts over the course of 3500 miles, many caused by the road damage mentioned above, thereby generating an even greater amount of tax dollars being put back into the local economies.
If there are still any objections, let’s look at some positive ideas that benefit communities large and small whose leadership embrace the ideals of Cyclist Nation.
Bicycle friendly roadway improvements are by far usually less expensive and less invasive to daily traffic flow. These improvements, such as wider lanes and shoulders, especially for the projects designed in recent years are, as a consequence of modern engineering and technological advances, going to be not only better for cyclists but also automobile traffic as well.
Further, bicycle-specific improvements (bicycle-safe grates, traffic signals that detect bicycles, etc.) are implemented in part to ensure that automobile driver liability can stay lower by avoiding tangles with cyclists. Bicycle and pedestrian friendly communities are often healthier and more closely connected than are their counterparts. Their property values are usually higher and they are often more in tune with global environmental concerns as well.
So the question of whether cyclists do indeed pay their fair share of taxes is often more far reaching than a simple yes or no, as would the non-cyclist folks have you believe. And it is resoundingly in favor of the cyclist.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Solution to Immigration Reform and Balancing the Budget
Well, recently I got to thinking about a couple of problems we have in this country: The Budget and Illegal Immigration Reform. To be sure, those are two dynamic issues that the leadership of this nation has been struggling with for years. Well, here is the perfect solution that will allow us to resolve both issues at the same time.
Annex the thirty-one Mexican States and the Federal District as eight American States.
The process, which would allow the United States to resurrect Manifest Destiny, that time-honored, but not recently implemented, mechanism to increase property mass to grow the economy. At the same time, we would virtually eliminate the illiegal immigration reform debate. The following breakdown is the proposed reorganization structure. The new state capitals are listed first.
New Durango
Durango, Aguascalientes, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, and Zacatecas
New California
Baja California and Baja California Sur
New Yucatan
Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo
Tabacruz
Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Vera Cruz
New Sonora
Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila
Mexico
Federal District, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Mexico, Morelos, and Tlaxcala
New Pueblo
Puebla, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Querétaro
New Leon
Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas
Most of the new states will have a direct economic amelioration, and all will contribute to the renascent rebirth of America as the number one super power in the League of Nations. Among these benefits are:
The addition of about fifty resort or vacation destinations, especially the very lucrative coastal areas, will provide tax dollars for the budgets in Defense and Welfare.
A couple hundred American corporations can legitimately call their manufacturing operations a part of the United States once again. Whether the newly crunched labor numbers become too large—due to increased employee taxes and mandated insurance premiums—will influence whether the industrial concerns remain in the new United States, or migrate westward to China, will be determined later.
The elimination of that worthless and annoying Peso will give the new states our more stable dollar for the new Americans to buy such things as over-priced gasoline and health care. As an ancillary benefit, there will be new jobs in fields such as the banking and finance industries to manage all of those new credit card accounts generated, as well as a like number of jobs in the insurance industry.
The Department of Defense can exponentially increase the number of foot soldiers in the United States Armed Forces with the immediate addition of an estimated 50 million able-bodied young men and women ready to prove their sacrifice for this country—sort of like an initiation.
Reducing the land mass of the U.S. southern border would ensure tighter controls against illegal immigration. The border fence will not be necessary thereby freeing up $900 Billion. A U.S. Army company of 18 sharpshooters—three units of six men (or women, for all of you Annie Oakley wannabes), working in eight-hour shifts—posted at the Guatemalan border would do the trick.
Central Mexico could also provide an out-of-sight, out-of-mind, location for a new federal prison to relieve overcrowding in our current 50 state prison systems. The current states would have to give up federal funds currently appropriated by Washington for individual security needs. However, there would be less recidivism to the state of the initial conviction. Since most relapse by convicts occurs within 100 miles of the institution of their incarceration and, as most criminals are pathetically unintelligent, upon release they can be supplied with directionally inverted maps, driving them further away from the Continental United States. If they make it as far south as the new United States border, the sharpshooters can use them as live practice targets.
In addition, further annexation with the following two areas will extend the benefits of the entire program.
New Salvador
Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras
New Panama
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama
By incorporating these new areas we can add the taxability of the lucrative Central American drug trade. And it will also bring us back to a nice round number of 60 States.
So what have we got to lose?