Lurie column- 2006-3-29: I've been robbed

I've been robbed

I support our troops – as do every American who want to see people in the line of fire rescued from danger and brought home safely.

I support the road to democracy. People across the globe should be free to find their own way, and elect their own governments. Dictatorship is a bad thing. Dictatorial decisions based on heaping riches and rewards on the ruling elite in favor of the people is a bad thing. Ruling juntas that stifle free and open debate and impose their unique will upon the country while paying lip service to elections and the popular vote deserve to be brought to task – and justice.

Countries that have a virtual inexhaustible supply of reserves and tax revenue from workers are the ideal prey-ground for army commanders who want to muffle cries of justice from the courts. The opposition party often terminates those who dare raise objections. They let loose with bribes and payoffs to shut up the opposition. In many egregious cases, a corrupt businessperson wins multi-million dollar orders or bid-free contract in exchange for his donation to some relative of the junta.

Unfortunately, that description doesn’t just fit Hussein,   Putin, or Muammar al-Qaddafi  It fits the party in power here at home.

When the march to war in Iraq stumbled over little inconveniences like lack of facts, Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s Chief Economic advisor was fired when he said the costs would be $100 to $200 billion.

When the WMD’s were unknown and unseen, Bush had a secret meeting with Tony Blair to announce the bombing start date, Two weeks before then Secretary of State was given now repudiated bogus pictures and data and sent to New York to show them off to the UN. Since that body refused to go along with the charade, as soon as possible thereafter our Czar sends a new ambassador to the Big Apple with instructions to tear apart every agreement and rip apart every activity. Ambassador Bolton has done a remarkable job sowing ferment and discord; better even than German foreign minister Ribbontrop in 1939 fended off the dogs of his war for months as Germany blitzkrieged across Europe.

When Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, issue a report that estimates the "true costs" of the Iraqi war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion, the defense department and state department ridiculed the Nobel Prize winner. Yet the numbers are start, and real, and big.

Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary proclaimed that Iraq’s oil would easily pay for the war. It has been shown he had no basis for that statement, other than for propaganda value in winning over Congress. He has since been rewarded with a plush job overseeing the world bank- chartered with bringing poor countries up with their bootstraps.

Mr. Stiglitz said that about $560 billion, which is a little more than half of the study's conservative estimate of the cost of the war, would have been enough to "fix" Social Security for the next 75 years. If one were thinking in terms of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he said, the money being spent on the war would have been enough to finance a "mega-mega-mega-Marshall Plan," which would have been "so much more" effective than the invasion of Iraq.

This is the way our government protects its’ own, stifles dissent, and proffers little but sound bites as Iraq descends into civil war and our soldiers equipped to do little but watch and wonder.

The war’s cost is now at $10,000 per household and rising. Bush said that ‘future president’s’ would determine when our boys would come home. I’m not sure the mothers can stand to wait, nor can American’s afford the cost.

 

Leib Lurie, a Troy resident, holds an MBA in Economics and Marketing.

 

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

Make Imagination Your Destination

Given a team of seven students, a few months to work together after school, and a budget of less than $200 would you be able to solve the following Destination Imagination challenge?

"Design and build a device that will send tennis or ping pong balls flying through the air at a target you also build that will be 14 feet away. The balls must be launched by some mechanical means, to reach the target area, then come back automatically, via some return device to the launching point. The smaller the target opening, the more points every ball that reaches it will score. Using a starting set of 5, how many balls can you get through the target and back in eight minutes?"

To make the challenge interesting, while the balls are flying, have your team integrate and perform a team-created story about something or someone who has gone away and then returned. Oh, and by the way, you score big points for creativity and originality but quality and polish matter too.

We were impressed with teams from elementary, middle and high school; they all solved the challenge on their own terms, in their own way, with vastly different approaches. Although the winning team at our regional tournament managed to score a few dozen balls, a team in Texas faced the unusual problem of helping the judges’ measure more than 1,200 balls whipping through their unique device.

Which way would you choose to launch your tennis balls? A catapult? Heavy spring? Air compressor? Leaf blower? Drill with a grinding wheel attachment?  Can you even imagine how some of these might be designed to accurately hit a target across the room?

Would your device be based on a story in the ancient world? Outer space? The wild west? Or a forest of Cicadas?

Saturday at Edison College, dozens of Destination Imagination teams gathered to strut their stuff in front of appraisers gathered from throughout the region. The teams of kids ranged from 1^st grade through High School, each with a volunteer Team Manager. Typically a parent, but there are some great teachers volunteering even more of their time to enrich the academics of their students with a chance to advance to the Ohio state championship round in April, or the Global finals in Knoxville on Memorial Day weekend.

The enthusiasm never wanes – as kids in costumes and duct tape wander the halls between performances for family, friends and schoolmates.

OK, think you can do it? Did I forget to tell you about the Instant Challenge? This 5 minute sudden death round is a never-seen-before; never-seen-again problem posed to the team in a closed room. They get two minutes to think and 3 minutes to solve the challenge. It might be verbal, or performance, or engineering based.

For example, given 20 pieces of raw spaghetti, some string, a few strips of tape, paper cups and some paper clips; how long a bridge can you make out of spaghetti? (hint, the stuff is far more brittle than you hope it will be.) The winning team got ten feet.

How many creative things can you make or say about a square of red cloth going round the room in three minutes flat. The winning team had over 35 ideas; including a sun-sail to power a ship to Jupiter. In DI, the rules are clear, but the rules encourage thinking outside the box and reward those who make imaginary leaps of space, time and physics.

Sometimes those pesky rules of physics and the properties of motion can be a hindrance; so this year, one of the Challenges was “Kidz Rules”. The team needed to create a story about a place where it is possible to bend or break one of the rules of motion (you know, like a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon) to show what might happen when, or if, such a 4^th dimensional place existed where things move of their own accord. The team had to make their story even more believable by producing a demonstration of this mythical motion as part of their production.

DI is another activity sponsored by the Troy Noon Optimist Club to benefit the youth of our community. Why not do something truly creative and original? Drop in at Taggart’s any Monday at Noon for a free lunch and take up the challenge of Optimism.

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

The future is bright in Troy

Speaking one’s mind in front of an audience is an awesome experience. I get to do it here every week. Others are not so lucky. Our teenagers are often talkative and chatty with their friends, and family; but how often can they put together a conscious stream of thought and present a dissertation to a live audience.

How often can they talk about peace, love, religion, poverty, disease, handicaps, and family in front of a group of attentive adults; and find us mesmerized at their vocabulary, poise and presentation, to say nothing of the underlying content that differentiates a rant from a cogent and clear discourse?

Yet that’s what we say last week at the Troy Junior High and Monday at the Optimist Club. Over 50 students prepped and primed for months to author, polish and present a short speech with the working title “The Future is Bright Because…”.

Thanks in no small part to Pat Morris at the Junior High, and other dedicated teachers in the English department, our school has one of the highest participation rates in the state for the annual Oratory contest. It takes a lot of work by a dozen volunteers from the Optimist Club to coach and help these teens prepare.

There are tips on poise, what to do with fidgeting hands, dress tips to make gawky 7ht and 8th grade ‘tweeners’ look more like the sophisticated “almost adults” that their verbiage and messages convey.

The Troy winners will get to go on to the district and regional contests, where substantial scholarship monies await. Regardless, the local winners will get a tax-free pre-paid college credit account from the Optimist Club to help pay for what will be an expected $250,000 educational cost for a four year degree at a private University with room, board and books for a current 7th grade student. The burden will be even worse as the cost of student loans have doubled this year.

The Optimist in me hopes for the best for every student striving to succeed, but it’s somewhat disheartening to see salary surveys that show the average college graduate will be paying off loans for 15-20 years, versus an average of 5 years of payoff that graduates in the 1990’s could expect.

Tuitions keep rising, interest doubles, restrictions on parental incomes drive down grant and scholarships, and our devolving global job market means that many purportedly ‘safe’ jobs for Americans are under price pressure from abroad. Yet I digress, the future is bright because…

These kids attacked issues of impoverished Indians begging for food from a Troy youngster while he was on a trip, lucky enough to be in a chauffeured limo, en-route to the Taj Mahal. One of India’s brightest and most prestigious monuments to a marvelous culture, yet Dickinsonesque ragamuffins were groveling for rice just outside the gates. This culture clash was brought forcefully home by one of our students who wove it into his speech focusing on the potential for all children.

Another girl bemoaned the fact that our secular Junior High had a lot less religion in her daily life than the Catholic elementary school she attended, but that finding expanded friends and activities left her feeling fulfilled in other ways as her bright look at the future.

One young man, wheelchair challenged, spoke about the changing culture of America working to make all places more accessible to those with special needs. (author’s note- the Troy Civic Theatre special needs accessible restroom project funded by the city will be finished for the Spring show).

I liked the spunk of the boy who wanted to play Hockey at Miami University while studying to be a defense lawyer (although he didn’t compare the two activities, it might have made a more poignant visual).

The students all spoke incognito to assure impartiality; but when introduced it was easy to see names we have heard before. Active, engaged teens who have been active in previous Optimist events and activities, such as Destination Imagination, as well as sports, church, Scouts, and heavy academics.

Their dedication and focus are something we can all look up to, because the future is brighter with these kids on the podium.

Leib Lurie is an Optimist Club member and Troy Resident You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

Lurie column- where the wind runs free

Where the wind runs free

Oklahoma! is America’s favorite musical, or so say many critics; and judging from the overwhelming audiences the past two weekends, Troy agrees.

The Troy Civic Theatre, performing at the Duke auditorium at the Barn in the Park embarked last Fall on a 40^th anniversary extravaganza, performing the most ambitious, largest spectacle ever squeezed into the theatre as the centerpiece of their troupes fortieth anniversary celebration.

Seventy Seven people were listed in the Playbill credits; including 21 in the orchestra, the largest pit ever used for this small community theatre, their overture set the stage as the 30 cast members positioned themselves behind the newly positioned curtain across the expanded and renovated flooring while the audience tapped their feet, comfortably ensconced in the new plush seats with stretched legroom.

The orchestra with a strong combination of brass, woodwinds and percussion, was led by Robert Besecker, who also directed the show. The music of Oklahoma, evoking the sweeping plains and open prairie, sets the mood through the performance; with fast dances alternating with the piece like an old work song spiritual “Poor Judd is Dead”. The range and depth kept shifting the pace such that a 3 ½ hour performance just sped by.

The backstage crew and set designers had outdone themselves. Huge realistic set pieces, rustling sheaves of corn (as high as an elephant’s eye) set in front of an expansive three dimensional backdrop that made it appear the prairie went on forever to the horizon.

Saturday night was a sell-out performance (and six of the scheduled 8 performances have sold out); even though the Troy Civic Theatre has added 25% more seats than ever before! Showing that live amateur community theatre that charges a modest $9.00 a seat in Miami county can stuff ‘em to the rafters for a great performance.

The Theatre is trying to add an encore performance this Sunday at 4pm- look at these pages to see if Rogers and Hammerstein agrees to a change in the royalty terms; and if you haven’t seen it yet- plan to do so Sunday. The cast and crew agreed, after 12 weeks of rehearsals and a thoroughly exhausting run to put on one more show as a benefit performance for charity.

The show itself is awesome. I first saw the movie years ago- and wondered frankly, along with others on the board, how a cramped little theatre would host such a musical epic. I joked for weeks about how we would get a locomotive, a dozen horse drawn wagons and acres of corn under the old beams in the barn. Yet the magic of theatre came through, with exciting choreography, innovative set design, and seamless shifts of props to secure the image of turn of the century Oklahoma.

The show features a number of high energy dances – with cowboys and their girls doing the newly introduced two step along with jigs and fast paced square dances that show off the high stepping exhilaration of the period. Swishing skirts, stomping boots and synchronized tap dancing made me lust after the open space freedom of the Oklahoma territory during the exciting period prior to statehood.

In many musicals, the dialog is often just a bridge between the energetic and vibrant musical numbers, and sometimes these short pieces made me impatient for another dance or song; but there was never a long wait, as music flows effortlessly after just a few paragraphs of dialog in almost every scene.

Seeing a play in small town Troy is a communal experience. One always sees friends or acquaintances, and this was no exception. It was especially pleasing to see some young actors, actresses and musicians who we had seen years ago as little tykes blooming into talented members of the show. Chatting between acts or after the show lets one re-connect with these folks and their families. In Community theatre, after the curtain call, friends join the cast on stage for pictures, reminiscing and kisses. Having a white picket fence already on stage gave this gossip time renewed meaning.

So if you can- come Sunday (339-7700 for tickets) or check the web site www.troycivictheatre.com It’s a rollicking good time.

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

 

Looking forward,

Leib
------------------------------
Leib Lurie, CEO,
OneCallNow Message Notification Service
division of MyTeam1 Corp
"Keep Your Group in the Loop"
Direct: 937-875-0385
Superlative Support: 877-698-3262
Fax: 937-335-3887  
623 South Clay St.  
Troy, OH 45373 USA