Investing Wisely: Why We Like Tebow

With the dismal state of the economy, you can’t avoid hearing commercials about investing in precious commodities such as gold or silver. While you may not have the capital to invest in those types of instruments, every day no matter your balance sheet, you make an even greater and possibly more risky investment—and that is where you place your trust.

I don’t know if it has always been this way, but it seems that for the last few years, as a world we’ve been overdrawn in our trust account. John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Mark Foley, Herman Cain, Jerry Sandusky, Ashton Kutcher, the list goes on—all of them have been proven or have been alleged to have been deceiving someone close to them and to a greater extent, society. This week, National League MVP Ryan Braun tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

Disturbing behavior is not limited to the national stage. Recently, Rev. Bartley Sorensen, pastor at St. John Fisher, Churchill, was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography. On December 13, former North Allegheny School District basketball coach Leon Boretzky, Wexford, struck a plea deal after being accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with a 14-year-old girl. It seems that not a week does not go by that a teacher is not reported to have molested a child or had sex with one of his or her students. I don’t know about you, but it’s making me a bit gun-shy when it comes to placing my trust in people.

I trust my parents and siblings, my husband, my children and friends and co-workers, but I interact with them every day so it’s easier to see if their deeds match their words. But when it comes to strangers and national figures, it’s much harder to judge a person’s character when all that we are presented with is their polished public persona.

Then, enter Tim Tebow. In case you don’t know Tebow’s story, his parents were Christian missionaries in the Philippines when his mother, while pregnant with him, contracted a rare disease and was advised to abort him. She refused and went on to homeschool Tim and his siblings. Prior to enrolling at the University of Florida, he spent three years doing missionary work. Once at Florida, he led the team to two NCAA Championships and became the first sophomore to receive the Heisman trophy. He was a first round NFL draft pick in 2010 for the Denver Broncos. A committed Christian, Tebow has become a divisive figure. People either love him or hate him. Why? Because he advocates for his Christian beliefs. The term “Tebowing” has come into the vernacular as a reference to his practice of taking to a knee and bowing in prayer. He has been imitated and mocked for this.

Tebow began this year’s NFL season as the backup quarterback for the Broncos. But an injury to the regular QB put Tebow in the spotlight. Since then, he has led the team to r seven wins in eight games, the last six being straight in a row. By the time this goes to print, the Broncos may have already snapped that streak, but what Tebow has wrought has been amazing.

Last Sunday, I had my Twitter feed up when I noticed the hashtag #TebowTime appearing in one of the tweets, which indicates a trending topic. I clicked on that hashtag and told my husband to see if the Broncos game was on. It wasn’t here, but my son called from Washington, D.C., where the game was airing and he provided play-by-play for us. As Tebow led the Broncos to an improbable, wild, come-from-behind win, the Twitterverse went insane with people Tweeting about Tebow--with approximately 98 percent of them being positive about him.

There have been other great quarterbacks and stunning victories and other dramatic sports stories before so why so much commotion about Tebow? I believe we are so starved for a person who we can trust, who we can admire, who actually practices what he preaches, that we want Tebow to succeed. I think we are all sick of liars, cheats, and perverts. I want Tebow to win and I want to believe in his good character, but I’m almost afraid of investing my trust in him for fear of being burned again. But we’ve lived so long with “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” I think we are all eager to say “Make it be so, Tebow!

Article originally appeared in Northern Connection magazine, January 2012 issue.

Just a Thought: The Big Wow 

Janice Lane Palko 

As you probably already know, Steve Jobs, the founder of the Apple empire died on October 5. I knew who Jobs was, but unlike many others, I didn’t idolize the man. I appreciate what he achieved, and I love my iPhone, which I sometimes call my second brain as it carries so much information that I don’t have to remember. As much as I liked his technology, I didn’t give much thought to its developer on a day-to-day basis. However, with Job’s passing, it has been almost unavoidable not see and hear about the details of his life. With the release of his biography on October 24, entitled Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, even more details will most like will make news during the coming weeks. The book has already received rave reviews, and many describe Jobs as a “bundle of contradictions,” “strangely fascinating,” and “brilliant/flawed/brutal and creative.”

While that will probably compel me to read the book, there is something else about Jobs that intrigues me more. After his death, his sister, writer Mona Simpson, composed a beautiful eulogy for the brother she did not meet until she was 25. If you are not familiar with their story, Jobs was given up for adoption. His biological parents, Syrian student Abdulfattah Jandali and coed Joanne Schieble, were unmarried when he was conceived, and they gave Jobs up for adoption. Jandali and Schieble later married and had his sister, Mona. The New York Times published the eulogy on October 30, and if you missed it, you should read it in its entirety. In it, Simpson speaks of their relationship:  

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

She concluded her eulogy with how Jobs died:  

Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it. He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place. Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again. This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude. He seemed to be climbing. But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later. Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Steve Jobs, who some have called the Edison of our age, who consistently dazzled the world with each technological advancement, who was a visionary, was wowed on his deathbed. There have been some reports by Isaacon that Jobs, who was a Buddhist began to seek God: "I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God," recalled Isaacson. "He said, 'Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it's cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on.'" Isaacson continued, "Then he paused for a second and he said, 'Yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He paused again, and he said, 'And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.'"

I don’t know the state of Jobs soul when he passed away or whether he ultimately came to believe in God, but I believe his final words offer us all great hope. Upon his transition from this life, his last words were not: OH NO. OH NO. OH NO. They were WOW--three times. The man who wowed the world was wowed at the time of his death.

When I read this, I immediately thought of the Bible verse from 1 Corinthians: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."

Like Jobs, more than 2,000 years ago, shepherds gazed off into the distance and were wowed. As we celebrate this Christmas, my prayer for us is that we may once again be wowed by the wonderment of Christmas and again be greeted with THE BIG WOW at the end of our lives.

Published originally in the December 2011 issue of Northern Connection magazine.

Size Does Matter—At Least, When It Comes to Writing 

As I was making pancakes over the weekend, I remembered something from when I was a kid. Many years ago, while my mom was making me pancakes, a drop of batter fell into the skillet, making a teeny pancake the size of a fingernail. My mom put it on my plate as a joke. I thought that miniscule flapjack was adorable. (OK I admit I’m weird, but I remember playing with the pancake all day.) We really weren’t too poor for toys that I had to play with food, but the size of the pancake entranced me!

Who says size doesn't matter?

The With the holidays in full swing, that little pancake got me to thinking about how just the size of something can make it appealing. (Cue the off-color jokes.) Ever been to Las Vegas during the holidays or seen the decorations in Rockefeller Center? They decorate with enormous ornaments. They take common Christmas objects and explode them in size. How about a life-size Nativity scene?

Another technique for enchanting is to take an item and shrink it. My kids, when they were little, loved playing with Micro-Machines and Quints (teeny quintuplet baby dolls). You may remember Liddle Kiddles if you grew up in the 60s and 70s—another set of micro dolls.

Honey, I shrunk the focus

Shrinking or enlarging something can also aid your writing. One effective technique is to dramatize a large, pivotal scene by focusing on a small part. In my writing classes, I often cited Wally Lamb’s hit novel of the 90s, She’s Come Undone. In the book, there is a rape scene of the main character, Dolores Price, which is a key turning point in the book. Instead of relating every gory detail, Lamb drives home Dolores’s distress by describing how she just keeps digging her nails into the dirt while being assaulted.

Anybody see my strawberries?

Enlarging something very small is also a great device—especially for revealing a character’s nature. Who can ever forget Captain Queeg’s outsized concern for the quart of strawberries in the classic The Caine Mutiny?

So if you have a scene which seems a bit sickly or weak perhaps, a dose of Viagra or that Miracle Reducing Pill might just be the prescription for what ails your writing.