My buddy JZ
– a Polish guy who wears glasses, not the rap star – elicited a
chuckle with this e-mail and I figured I’d pass it along because we
could all definitely use a good chuckle, right?
Notification Alert:
Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity,
gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, The Light at the
End of the Tunnel has been turned off.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Didn’t I just get that same memo last week from the boss?
My buddy JZ – a Polish guy who wears glasses, not the rap star – elicited a chuckle with this e-mail and I figured I’d pass it along because we could all definitely use a good chuckle, right?
Notification Alert:
Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, The Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Didn’t I just get that same memo last week from the boss?
If you can remember when “boss” meant that’s cool, you’re cool in my book.
Uncool is having a teacher at Gilroy High School with 100 or so teenage girls as “friends” on a social networking site. Now he’s a former GHS teacher having been arrested for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Is there any doubt personnel screening at Gilroy Unified should include looking up the person on social networking sites? There shouldn’t be. Write it into the pre-hiring policy pronto.
Pronto, Penny Cakes, the new bakery operated by Penny Perluss and husband Ken, has opened – it’s a neighbor to the Claddagh Irish Pub on First Street – and if you like the sweet smell of luscious desserts and “wow” cake design, it’s a must stop. Penny should talk to Rich Arioto at Solis Winery because pairing her baby chocolate cupcakes with Solis’ award-winning Merlot … well, that would be sweet.
And there will be a sweet opportunity to do just that when Solis hosts Merlot Madness on Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22 from noon to 4:30 p.m. It’s a chance to taste some of the finest wine from the area, including a special barrel taste of 2007 Estate Merlot, and it’s only $10. Food will be available, too, and a little music is also on the menu at the beautiful setting on Hecker Pass Highway.
Just east of the HPH, owners Mike and Lesley Benson are no doubt preparing for the big day of the year when the whole town packs the Claddagh for St. Patrick’s Day. Last year, the entire City Council met there, but the leprechaun who accompanied them swears no Brown Act violations occurred – unless you count Bob Dillon slurping a Jameson’s as a Brown Act violation …
And our Violation Vocabulary Word for the Day is: LIQUIDITY … Definition: Liquidity is when you look at your retirement funds and wet your pants! … Thanks, I think, to my buddy Al “Hangdog” Sturla for that …
While we’re all a little “hangdog” these days, it’s good to keep things in perspective. The annual Relay for Life American Cancer Society fund-raising event is coming to the ranch site at Christmas Hill Park on Friday and Saturday, June 19 and 20. If you’d like to honor a loved one who is fighting, has beaten or has lost a battle with cancer, a wonderful way to do that and help ACS fight the good fight is to purchase a luminaria. That’s a bag filled with sand and a small candle that makes it glow. The bag bears the name and a photo (optional) of a person. It’s a $10 donation, and the luminarias line the track at The Relay lighting the way for walkers during the night on the “path of hope.” Susan Mister is the contact. She and her husband have a clever email –
mr********@ea*******.net
and she’ll be happy to help you make arrangements.
Making arrangements to restore some common sense in government during this nonsensical age of “Let’s just print more money” is perhaps hopeless. As a nation and as a community we should think about these words of wisdom from Presbyterian minister William J.H. Boetcker and act accordingly: “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
On that note, will the high school students who were suspended during the fights last Friday – the students who clearly need it most – be required to somehow take part in the “Character Counts” assembly all the Gilroy High students attended Tuesday? A Saturday session might help raise the character level a notch or two. Such a shame that a few bad apples showed their rotten side with the Distinguished School Award Committee on campus. Though I chafe at this type of esoteric notion, I think there’s a self-esteem issue involved at GHS …
That aside, there’s the inside and the outside … and while the GHS staff, Principal James Maxwell and the Gilroy police did a good job quelling the trouble in a very tense situation inside the GHS campus, the outside – the communication with parents – didn’t measure up. There has to be a protocol in those situations whereby parents can be informed of events in honest terms and alerted to something like an early dismissal. It should involve proactive contact with the media. Directing students to shut down their cell phones, not answering parent phone calls and sending a mass message out after 5 p.m. isn’t the answer.
