The True Nature of Luck

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
Thomas Jefferson

A rabbit's foot. A number, a color, a date, an email. All promise to bring you luck if you rub it, or write it or do something on it. But are they really lucky?

Luck is mostly happenstance; that is, being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. Good luck is usually the result of being able to take advantage of happenstance, or putting yourself in position to be lucky by working hard to get there.

Example: My dad's family was so poor when he was growing up (it was in the middle of the Great Depression and his parents didn't speak English, so they could only get very low paying jobs), that he used to go down to the farmer's market every morning to pick up the vegetables dropped by the produce trucks in order to help feed the family. When he was old enough, he joined the Army Air Corps and became a pilot. When he left, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill, which helped him pay his way through college, and later, to buy his first house.

After becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college, my dad started his own business. In order to find clients, he started knocking on the doors of the businesses near his. One of his first clients was a well-known San Francisco character name Enrico Banducci. Banducci owned, among other things, a nightclub called the Hungry I. Banducci was so happy with my dad's work that he introduced him to the managers of the performers who appeared at the Hungry I. These introductions lead my dad to several very big clients including some of the most famous entertainers in the world.

(ENRICO BANDUCCI: 1922-2007 / The impresario of North Beach
The legacy of Enrico Banducci

Just a few of the well-known performers whose careers got an early boost from Enrico Banducci and the hungry i: (top row) comedians Bill Cosby, Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, Woody Allen, Bob Newhart, Dick Gregory, Shelley Berman, Lenny Bruce, (bottom row) the Smothers Brothers (Tom and Dick), Irwin S. Corey and Ronnie Schell; singers Barbra Streisand and the Kingston Trio (from left, Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane). Chronicle File Photos)

My dad went from being dirt poor to becoming a multi-millionaire. Was this luck? No. It was a combination of hard work, being in right place at the right time and taking advantage of it.

A Park School example:

A few years ago, Park had a student named Davis Bentley. Davis is a great kid who always has a smile on his face. He also loves to ride a bike. I used to see him, when he was in 4th grade, riding up Railroad Grade, by himself, late in the afternoon after school. Years later, I still see him on the road of Marin, only now, he is just a blur as he rides much faster than I can.

"My goal," he once told me, "is to ride in the Tour de France."


Davis may get his chance. Because of his outstanding performances in both road and mountain bike races, he is now, at the age of 16, a member of the US National Jr Cycling Team. Is it luck? Or hard work and dedication to doing something he really loves?



“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” - anon

Cha Cha Slide

Oprah saw this commercial and liked it so much that she invited the kid to be on her show.

The Olympic Trials

The Olympics is one of my favorite sporting events to watch. Every four years, people from around the world gather in one place for a friendly competition. The Olympics is time of peace and goodwill when people can put aside their political and religious differences and just have fun competing against one another. I hope you watch them this year.

The Olympics won't start until August, but the US Olympic Trials are happening now.

The United States is almost unique among the other countries when it comes to the Olympics for it is one of the few countries which requires athletes to compete for spots on the team through the Olympic Trials. During the trials, as in the Olympics themselves, amazing things happen, like athletes performing better than they ever have and beating people they aren't supposed to be able to beat.

This year, for example, in a sport where more competitors are between the ages of 18-25, a 41 year old woman, Dara Torres (about Ms. Dunn's age) won the 100 meter freestyle in swimming. A man named Tyson Gay ran the fastest 100 meter dash ever recorded (not a world record though, too much wind). And then there is Jordan Hasay.

Hasay just finished her junior year of high school. She is 16 years old, but looks about 12 or 13 for she is very slender and is barely over 5 feet tall. She has hair down to her waist. She is also one of the fastest high school distance runners in the country. She started running in 4th grade when she found that she "could beat all the boys".


Hasay went to the trials as a spectator. Then, two runners dropped out of the 1500 meter race. She entered, even though it isn't her specialty, for she is used to longer distances. She finished 7th in her first race, barely qualifying for the semifinals.

In her semifinal heat, Hasay ran most of the race in the pack, hanging around in about 9th place about 20 yards behind the leaders. Then, with about 300 meters left, she kicked. She said later "the last 300 I just wanted to give it all I had and see what I could do." She passed 4 runners and finished 6th. She's qualified for the finals (the top 6 qualify). Her time? 4:14.5, a national high school record.

"It was incredible on that last lap. I could just hear the crowd scream. It was so exciting."

It's things like this that make the Olympics, and the Trials, great.

For more on Jordan Hasay, go to: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/dave_krider/10/25/10.25.notes/index.html

The Value of Book Reviews

My niece, who is going into 5th grade next year, really likes to read so I decided to give her some books for Christmas and her birthday. I didn't know what to get her, so I took suggestions from some of you.

Based on your recommendations, the books I gave her were "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane",


"The Invention of Hugo Cabret"


and "The Mysterious Benedict Society".


She loved them all, so much so that she read them all more than once and urged her mom and her cousins to read them too.

So, thanks for the recommendations and keep reading!

Labels

I've reorganized my blog by labeling every post. This will make is easier to find an old post. The labels are self-explanatory. To use them, simply click on the appropriate label, i.e. "paranormal". The blog will then open all posts with that label.

What is "Cool"? (What's Hot? What's Not?)

Got this off the web:

"As younger children, we learn right and wrong and also what gets us the most positive response from the people most important to us. A smile, a clever trick, a certain savoir faire. If we were "cool" with our parents, assuming we had parents of course, we usually felt pretty good as long as people were loving and caring for us.

But adolescence is a whole new experience. There are kids in school who are downright scary, and those we wish we could be just like. There are all kinds of obstacles to having the whole world simply declare you the perfect young lady or man, or the world's most popular student in school.

Now it gets tricky to walk down the line, trying to make parents proud (or at least not get grounded) while staying popular with those you respect and admire. It's tough staying clear of the "geek of the year" award, or resisting peer pressure to try a few things which may not be too "cool". Or right. Or safe.


The teen years are driven by the hormone-powered energy and optimism that comes only with adolescence: the feeling of being invincible, with the world just waiting to welcome you to good times just ahead. Driver's licenses, freedom, romance and trust will soon be the prizes, but many don't have the patience to wait.

And to whom does a teen turn to see what is "normal" or not? Other teens, of course! Friends. The same one your parents ask questions about and everyone else whispers rumors about. Who likes who? Who is the smartest, who's going to fight? Who is the cutest, the prettiest, the best dancer or fighter, the best dressed, best in sports, best of friends, or just plain "cool".


"Your sneakers and attitude are of equal importance...."
Definitely you want to look cool to the "right" group of friends; and your sneakers and attitude are of equal importance in school. And maybe your smile or your shape, or your jokes or your brains or your brawn are what make YOU feel good. Or maybe you only wish to be popular but you're really quite shy, or embarassed or slow, too heavy or thin, or you want to make friends but don't know where to begin.
But there has to be something which is "special" about you:

We all have our gifts!

Self-esteem, which I find teens can recite lessons on at the drop of a hat, comes from within each of us, that part of us which says, hey, I'm real good at this! For some people it's being artistic, or cute, or having a pleasant voice. For others it's being brilliant at something, or just being "good". Still others get their self-esteem making grades, points, or money. This is true throughout one's entire life.

We all have to feel good about ourselves, from the love we have at home, from the respect and acceptance of our friends, and--the one thing we have total control over-- from what we actually do with our ability and our blessings. And that is the secret of self-esteem.

But teens are really just beginning to test themselves, at attracting the opposite sex, at keeping the love at home while not daring to be seen alive with parents in public, and a few other pretty tough balancing acts.

We all know that the teen years are nothing if not a determination to be recognized, as someone or something who is appreciated. Parents have a tough time with this. So do kids. But since time began, teens have looked to other teens for what is "cool", which changes by the week in many ways, and in other ways never changes at all.

Keeping in mind self esteem, peer pressure, hormones, and social experiences in middle schools ....It's no wonder that teens are so influenced by that which is cool and that which is not. Recently I asked a group of teens, boys and girls aged 12 to 18, to comment on 3 simple questions, "What's Cool?", "What's Hot?", and "What's Not?"

A sampling of their answers:

Boys

"Chess and video." (13)
"Hanging out, skateboarding, alternative music". (14)
"You know what made me feel special? When I graduated I got an award and when they said my name, everybody cheered" (14)
"cel phones" (14)

Girls

"Beating my 15-year old [boy] cousin in Jetskiing" (12)
"Boys. Going out, TV, Nintendo, family, friends. Dressing cool, like me." (13)
"Music, body piercing" (14)
"Dying your hair purple, bell bottoms...the 60's were cool."(14)
"I live in the projects, everybody dresses a certain way.[baggy jeans] For me, that's cool, being totally different from everybody else" (14)
"Being yourself. Staying on a straight line, not getting pregnant at 14, using drugs, smoking cigarettes, thinking it's cool. It's NOT cool. If people would stop looking for approval, they'd be happy being themselves." (18)"

The truth is, what's cool is entirely a matter of opinion. What's cool to you may not be cool to somebody else. What's cool to an athlete might not be cool to a musician. The key to whole message above is the part about self-esteem. So, be true to yourself. You will find others who share your interests & beliefs. To be cool, be strong.

Happiness

Charles Schulz, the author of the comic strip "Peanuts", once wrote a book called "Happiness is a Warm Puppy". Was this just a cute title for a book, or was Schulz trying to tell us something?


Everybody loves puppies. They're cute, cuddly and always happy to see you. Puppies will cheer you up when you are in a bad mood and are always ready to play with you. Puppies don't care how cool you are, how you look, how you did in school or whether or not you won your game. Puppies love you no matter what. In return, all the puppy asks is that you love it back.

So, yes, happiness is a warm puppy, but Schulz was really writing about something bigger than that. He was telling us one of the keys to happiness:

To love and to be loved.