Anslinger Being Tough?
Harry Anslinger was a United States government official who served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He was a supporter of prohibition and the criminalization of drugs, and played a pivotal role in cannabis prohibition. [1]
Excerpt from the book:
Many people assume what we call the War on Drugs began in 1971 during the Nixon Administration. Some believe “the War” began during Prohibition due to the relentless efforts of a racist and moralist federal agent named Harry Anslinger. [2]
Continuing later in the book:
Anslinger was a bureaucratic empire-builder and he saw marijuana as the leverage needed to expand the size and power of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He railed against the use of reefer, weed, or pot by blacks, particularly black entertainers. Anslinger hated jazz with its free-wheeling lack of rigid structure and he equated it with what he viewed as black depravity. Black bandleader Cab Calloway had a 1933 hit song called Reefer Man featured in the movie International House. Anslinger must have been furious. [2]
References:
- Wikipedia, Harry Jacob Anslinger
- Prisoner of War: The Story of White Boy Rick and The War on Drugs by Vince Wade – Page 20, 39
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- If You’re Having a Bad Day, Step Back and Rewrite the Script – by Dr. Ross Reck
Pixabay A friend of mine gave me this advice when I was having a bad day. What she meant was, instead of whining or playing the victim when you’re having a bad day, step back, take a deep breath, and say to yourself, “I’m going to rewrite the rest of today’s script.” Then make it your mission to brighten the day of everyone around you by saying or doing something that brings a smile to their face. When you do this, they will feel compelled to say or do something that makes you smile, and pretty soon your bad day will be in your rear-view mirror. For example, I was feeling down during the holiday season last year. My wife Marcia suggested I go to Trader Joe’s and tell the employees there how much I appreciate them and all the joy they brought to my life. I took her up on her suggestion and returned home a grateful and energized person. The lesson here is you can rewrite the script when you’re having a bad day.
References:
Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard – Available from Amazon.com Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
- Been Workin’ On The Railroad
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
On the morning of February 16th, 1948 l reported for work in the General Claims Department Office of the Grand Trunk Western Railroad in Detroit, Michigan. Thirty Five years later I retired from the GTWRR. I’d worked my way up to the job of Corporate Communications Officer, reporting directly to the railroad president.. When someone called and asked me who would be filling my vacancy I replied that I was not leaving a vacancy. I had completed my mission as Corporate Communications Officer. I had delivered my message and now I was moving on to carry that message out to the whole world.
Since 1953 I have worked in all fifty of our United States of America, In six of the Canadian Provinces, in Mexico and many other countries including Hong Kong, Malaysia, Bermuda.. You know, in seventy two years in the safety field that list of clients really adds up. There were the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, General Motors, The UAW CIO, Toyota, Power Companies,, Nuclear Sites, so many groups like Pest Control People at Purdue University, Students at Notre Dame, General Electric, DuPont, to students and teachers on an Indian Reservation, at a high school where Hillary Clinton had been a student in Chicago. haha….what a ridiculous task remembering the clients… For the crew of a nuclear submarine at Pearl Harbor. And oh, the joy of those memories. But enough of that. And what was my message I carried to one and all? So simple you could write it on your hand and then repeat it to everyone you meet and read it to yourself too. Simply, “There is greatness in you. ” Then the challenge is to help them discover that greatness.
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- Let That Little Kid Come Out
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
When I woke up this morning I was thinking about a song I wrote about twenty years ago that I recorded with Greg Brayton. It went…
Let that little kid come out in me
Let me chase a butterfly let me climb a tree
Let me mess my hair up and giggle out with glee
Oh, let that little kid come out in me.Letting out that little kid sounded like a good idea after all the politics on TV lately.
Well, I ran through the lyrics a few times and then I started thinking what kid things I might try to do today. I used to juggle balls. Three of them. I tried that a few months ago and it was a disaster. I only tried that once so maybe I should try again. I have one of those pick up tools so that should make it easier to pick up the balls.
My YoYo is around here somewhere. I might try to find it. I used to be pretty good with that and haven’t tried it in about twenty or thirty years or so. I might try that one. And I think in one of the drawers upstairs from my office next to my drums I have a harmonica. I never could play that darn thing but it might be fun to try that out.
Oh Lordy, let that little kid come out in me.
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- We Are All Somebody Special!
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
I must admit that I have been staring at this blank spot in this memo trying to fill it with something that might be appropriate for these challenging times. Another fact that I don’t like to admit is that much of what I write is written for myself. In other words, I write advice to myself and let you read over my shoulder, that is, if you have a mind to. Right now I need a whole lot of uplifting. Well here goes.
In 1979 I spoke at a Success Rally in the hockey rink located on I-94 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A full house. Shared the platform with five other well known speakers. In the locker room where we gathered, I asked the group there just what did they think this audience was looking for. With his tongue in his cheek, I learned, a popular psychologist said, “Art, a lot of these people have bad problems in their lives. Some are having trouble with alcohol and drugs. Some are going through really nasty divorces, some bankruptcy, some have just lost their jobs. What they want is for you, in about 45 minutes, to give them the secret, the keys to success and happiness and to attaining riches and happiness and instantly change their lives.” I replied, “Well that’s easy. But I think we’ve got the wrong audience. Many of these folks should have been taught that already when they were children being hugged by their moms and dads. This is really a giant rehabilitation meeting,” By the time I said it I realized that I had made a great discovery. Most of us in that locker room went back home and began working on ideas for parents to teach children success concepts.
Just a few months later I visited my daughter in Madrid and while we wandered around Spain for a couple of weeks I came up with my first children’s book titled “The Three Robots”. (A book for parents to read to their kids while they hugged them.)
By 1981 I had started writing and publishing a mess of children’s books and doing presentations for kids in the schools. I wrote some poems and songs too and one song titled” “I’m Somebody”, went “I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m Somebody, not a sad Nobody,I’m Somebody! And I wear a smile just to let the whole world know that this somebody’s happy inside.”
So now I’m 90 and I started singing that same song again. I’m still Happy, I’m Healthy, I’m somebody! Not a sad nobody. I’m somebody! Yes I wear a smile just to let the whole world know, that THIS SOMEBODY’S HAPPY INSIDE!. I think that is important… that we all find some happy song to sing out loud. Do it in the shower to test it out. Try the song “Singing in the Rain.” Aw, certainly there is a happy song you can pull up from your past. Come on America! It is time for a song. Put on a happy face. Smiling,. when it is sincere is contagious. Better that you get caught with a smile than a virus. Sing your song and then share it.
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- Doing the Math
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
It doesn’t take a mathematical genius or an Einstein to conclude that the most vulnerable to this virus that all America and most of the rest of the world is under attack from, are the aged who are asked to stay in their homes. Being 90 with an 85 year-old wife, Jean and I are isolated in our home here in Hillsborough, N.C.and are not only surviving, we are determined and praying to be around together long after a victory over this evil enemy that is attacking.
Being a native born Detroiter my new theme song is by the rock band called Rare Earth, a Motown recording, their big hit “Stayin’ Alive!.”
I’ve printed up the John Steinbeck quote, “A sad soul can kill you far quicker than a germ.”
I’ve put one of my own songs from earlier years – titled “Bein’ Together” on my CD Player and listen to it daily. I think it fits the occasion and Jean sings alone with me. You might sing along with it too and share is with older couples who might be now confined to their homes. We all are in this together so let my song Bein’ Together life your spirits and help bring out that greatness that is in you.
Here are the lyrics:
Bein’ Together
Art Fettig Featuring Greg BraytonMale
Has that old flame died out? Is the romance gone?
Have we been together a little too long?
Has that old passion ebbed? Is it over my dear?
Or should we try it out for another year?Chorus Duet
Bein’ together. Bein’ together.
Through heaven and hell and in all kinds of weather.
Bein’ together. Bein’ together.
We’re just stuck with each other, but only forever.Verse Female
Do you love me, my Sweet Face, the way that you did,
The day that we met, I was only a kid.
Though you take me for granted, you still take me out.
And if you’re askin’ do I love you, my dear, there’s no doubt.Verse Male
We’ve survived in this marriage for so many years.Female
And we’ve held on through the laughter and the tears.Male
What excites us is kissin’Female
And cuddlin’ up tight.Duet
Yes the flame is alive, and it’s blazin’ tonight.Repeat Chorus Duet
Tag Duet
Yes, we’re stuck with each other(Male) I love it! (Female) Me too!
Duet
But only forever.Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- Art Fettig: Remembering Greg
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
Greg Brayton Synergism
When I perform monthly at our local Senior Day Care Center I share the songs I’ve written that Greg Brayton and I recorded from 1997- 2001. There were 57 songs in all and it was one of the happiest, most creative experiences of my lifetime. I would take my sows ear set of lyrics and a tune in my head over to the studio arriving at 9 a.m. and just about three hours later Greg and I would shake hands, I’d get into my Red Explorer and drive home with the tape player blasting what seemed like a silver purse of a song from the cassette we’d just completed.
Talk about synergism! – the act of taking two elements and creating something else-, it was like my teaming up with Greg in a joint effort and doing magic math. To me it was like 1+1= 47 or 153 or 7,692. In Greg’s studio my mind would spin. Some mornings I would sit out in Greg’s parking area trying to build up the courage to take my sorry offering inside. It was as if Greg’s genius, together with his magical synthesizers, offered just about any concept of music my wild imagination might conjure up. Once it was a Salvation Army Band on the corner. Another time an old blues piano man in a smokey bar. A karaoke singer in a sleazy club. A bunch of rockers with a couple of motorcycles roaring around the studio. Church bells. A church choir. Strings, violins -lots of violins – and then full string sections for background. Male and female duets with all voices coming from Greg. He was a screeching Edith Bunker or the sweet voice in a tender love song.
Art Fettig and Greg Brayton Greg cranked out unique arrangements on the spot. When we recorded my patriotic song America is So Beautiful, Greg brought tears to my eyes. Recording my song “If I Loved You Any More You’d Be My Dog,” made us work overtime that day because we were actually rolling around on the studio floor with uncontrolled laughter.
One day I brought in what I think is one of my best songs titled “I Just Love Wakin’ Up With You.” I asked Greg to just sing it without a background and then vamp in a guitar background. Greg insisted that that was not the way he recorded songs. He explained that he first he had to lay in a background, some rhythm, and some actual music line he could follow while singing. We discussed this for some time and I finally yelled out a challenge, “Greg, you are chicken. You can do anything if you just try it!”
I Love That Song
Greg walked over to the area where he recorded the vocals and sang right through that entire song without musical background. He then went back with just his guitar and played the most beautiful musical vamping behind the lyrics one could imagine. He did both of these without a single error. Everything was on key and he did it in one take. I love that song and the way Greg did it. It gives me goose bumps.
Every time I pick up a CD now I think about Greg. He was a loving, caring man and his greatest joy in addition to family was performing in the Coldwater United Methodist Church in Coldwater, Michigan where he served as Director of the Praise Band and continued to be involved with the music program for the 12 long years after he was diagnosed with cancer. At his funeral the church was packed with his fans who loved him and many more stood outside. At a couple of stores in town the signs on their windows read, “Gone to Greg’s Funeral.”
I wish that everyone might experience a Greg Brayton in their lifetime.
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- What Goes Around Comes Around – by Dr. Ross Reck
Pixabay You’ve all heard the saying, “What goes around, comes around.” It’s usually intended to mean that if you do something with the intent of hurting someone, negative consequences will someday come back to bite you. The same holds true when you are kind to someone. When you make someone feel good, they become happy and automatically search for opportunities to be kind to you. This means that the more people you are kind to, the more people you have out there looking to return the favor. This not only adds more joy to your life; it also adds more fun. So, make it a point to do or say something kind to the people you come into contact with, and you’ll quickly notice how much better you feel about who you are.
References:
Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard – Available from Amazon.com Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
- Say Something Good – America
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
This little section goes way back. It was 1976 when I first started writing good things about America as a part of my PROGRAMS America. At that time I figured there was certainly enough good stuff about America to last me a lifetime. People just naturally stood up for The Star Spangled Banner and we didn’t make clothes out of the American flag. Most everyone flew the flag right side up and we didn’t have breaking news on half a dozen TV stations keeping folks all riled up about things back then. We didn’t have Facebook and Twitter and a hundred other social networks where a story might get a million hits in a day and the stock market didn’t zoom up and down like a couple of little playful kids were running it. In 1976 Gerald Ford was President and he rode on our Grand Trunk Western Railroad campaigning with speeches at station stops. I shot photos of him with our railroad president on his private car with just the wives, his chief surgeon and the other photographer present. I sure felt “something good” that day having that honor.
What if I asked you, the reader, to tell me something good about America right now? What would you say? Would the good things come a pouring out of your mouth and right from your soul? Me? I’m starting a list from scratch to see if I can name five things. Then ten. Then twenty. Then a hundred. I won’t qualify my answers with a “Yes, but…”
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
- If You Want Your New Year to Be Happier, Focus on Being Kind – by Dr. Ross Reck
Pixabay One thing that scientific research is very clear on is that relationships—warm personal relationships—make us happier and healthier. Research further points out that the frequency and quality of our interactions with other people are the two major predictors of our happiness. What this means is that if we want the coming year to be happier, we need to focus on building and maintaining warm personal relations. And what’s the secret to building and maintaining warm personal relationships? The answer is kindness—when you are kind, you attract people to you like a magnet and the number and quality of your relationships begins to grow quickly. So, if you want this coming year to be happier than the last, make it one of your New Year’s resolutions to be kind to everyone you come into contact with. Do this, and your happiness will take care of itself.
References:
Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard – Available from Amazon.com Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
- Musical Enchantment
Art Fettig ARCHIVES Home Page | About | Poems | Music | Videos
It’s Art Fettig in this 73 year old photo with his first set of drums. I sat down recently at my drum set upstairs and a memory flashed into my mind. I was 13, had met a new friend my age just two streets over and found out he was playing boogie woogie on his downstairs piano. His name was Pat Boyer. He knew just two songs, one was by a guy named Pine Top’s. I was enchanted. I started tapping out a beat on my knees. It wasn’t long until I got my hands on some jazz brushes and I would tote the big Detroit phone book with me and smack out a beat with those brushes and we’d would play for hours. It was 1942 and I graduated from the 8th grade and then July 5th was my 14th birthday, My parents combined the two occasions and gave me a gift of a hundred dollars. I went out and bought my first set of drums. It was an ancient set at that time but I would spend hours just banging away on those drums. Sometimes I’d carry just my snare drum and high sock cymbals over to Pat’s basement and we’d play for hours together.
My mom persuaded me to go with her downtown to Grinnel’s Music Store and take drum lessons. The first thing the instructor said was for me to put my drum set away for the first six months and that was the last lesson I took.
I later had two exciting adventures in the army playing drums and one saved my life, but those are different stories. I went to the internet and found this site. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d125OlLULs Sure enough I found Pine Tops Boogie and I was enchanted again. In these challenging times with the virus and all it is a good thing to find a little enchantment.
Recommended Reading
Art Fettig’s The Platinum Rule – Available from Amazon.com The Platinum Rule by Art Fettig
The Age Old Secret to Happiness and Prosperity. If you believe in the Golden Rule then, just maybe, you are one of those fortunate few who are ready to take a giant step forwaqrd in your lives to fame, fortune and a great new plateau of personal satisfaction.
Art Fettig has identified a little known key to wealth and happiness in his book The Platinum rule. I hope that millions of people discover this little book and apply this giving formula. Trul their lives will be enriched and certainly this will be a better world.” – The Wickman Formula, Executive Press 1991
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