Waiting

Things have been relatively quiet lately. All is quiet with the neighbors. A never-ending stream of those awful political ads for senator of our state. Got a haircut today, too short, like a man's haircut -- but it'll grow out soon enough (I hope). Got a pedicure and manicure today. Got a full tank of gas and enough food and supplies to keep me for a month if necessary, and enough bird foods for a month or so.

Not that I'm paranoid, you understand. If this sort of thing interests you, just Google for October 7, 2008 and/or for web bot project. Two other sites are urbansurvival.com and halfpasthuman.com.

I have no doubt we're on the verge of an economic collapse. We can't keep living on credit the way we have been (businesses, government, individuals) without paying the price -- so to speak.

If there's any doubt among my two or three readers -- I'm voting Obama. I cannot abide the thought of another four years of Bush in the guise of McCain. Several of my friends and I have been having a wonderful time exchanging links about Palin and the October 7 "event" and the economy. Things can look so bad you have to laugh or lose your mind.

My little birds are perfect, as always. Nicholas makes kissy noises after bedtime -- I think he's fussing at me for staying up past his bedtime. I've been keeping Sugar Franklin out longer than usual and giving her more scritches -- she's been short-tempered with me lately and I think maybe she's been shortchanged (or believes she's been shortchanged) on attention from me. She's responded well to this extra attention, though she still bites my ear once in awhile just because.

Neighbors, Neighbors, Neighbors

Saturday I happened to glance out the window at my backyard -- there were three or four of the neighbors' puppies playing and rolling around in the yard.

I walked over and the young black woman (whom I haven't seen for several weeks) came to the door and came out on the porch. About the same time the puppies came running across my front yard to the neighbors' front yard. I leaned down and petted one of them (they really are cute), while the young black woman apologized several times. The man who lives there watched all this from inside the living room.

Haven't seen the Asian looking woman for several days, though the red car she drives is parked in the street (presumably so the man can get his big copper-colored truck in and out of the driveway).

More news as it happens!

The picture of two baby cockatiels is from morguefile.com. I figured a picture of baby cockatiels would nicely complement a small story about puppies.

Paul Newman

If there was ever an actor with class, it was Paul Newman. A magnificent actor, a man married to the same woman for 50 years, a creator of a successful charity, a fast race car driver . . . .

And he never had to appear on Entertainment Tonight to show himself off. Very few actors have the kind of natural presence he had.

As handsome at 83 as he was at 25, I've loved every movie of his I've seen -- I'm sure I haven't seen them all and I guess there'll be a run on his movies at the video stores for awhile.

Neighbors & Bailing Out Wall St

I had what I thought was a friendly moment with the Asian looking woman this afternoon. She had come out of the house to put some mail in their mailbox just as I was coming in from work. Five of the puppies followed her out the door. They wandered over to my yard and she frantically tried to shoo them back to her yard. I complimented the puppies several times; they really were cute little things, and I asked what breed they were. She said they were "blue pits," and she was going to sell them for a friend.

I am extremely unhappy about this bailout of Wall Street. Thanks to Reagan's deregulation and "trickle down" theory and the Republicans gorging at the public trough, we've all been getting screwed for decades now. And now these guys want the government to bail them out; they want a blank check and they want it right now. Just ask Paulson; he'll tell you the economy will tank if Congress doesn't bail them out within a week.

And what, exactly, are we, the lowly taxpayer, getting out of this? (Pass the vaseline, please.) I've watched my 401(k) drop by nearly half this year, most of the losses from the past four months. I'll never be able to retire with what I and my employer contribute to my 401(k) as long as this crap keeps happening. Yes, I know eventually the economy will turn around, but how many years will it take?

Ken Globus

Ken Globus' methods were decried by numerous parrot behavior consultants because those methods depended on the technique of flooding, but there are several parrot owners out there who found his techniques effective through all the years he practiced.
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Ken Globus: March 7, 1946 - Sept. 10, 2008
The Bird Whisperer

Dear Friends:
This will come as a surprise to many people who didn't know he was ill, but Ken Globus passed away on September 10th. Ken, who hadn't been a smoker for about 25 years, was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to his esophagus. What's truly shocking is that, between his original diagnosis and his death, only 10 weeks had elapsed.

Most of you are receiving this email because you're on his mailing list. So most of you know him as The Bird Whisperer.

Here are some things you may not know about how Ken got started working with aggressive and phobic birds. Our parents used to own a tropical fish store in Inglewood, California. One day, our mother cleared out some space in the store and asked Ken what he thought would be a good idea to put there. Ken thought about it, then suggested that they might start carrying a few birds. Since our parents knew nothing about birds, they put Ken in charge, and he got to work reading books and researching bird behavior before he bought his first bird for the store. Keep in mind that, in those days, almost all birds sold in stores were wild caught, not bred in captivity - so they were usually pretty terrified and unruly. What Ken discovered - to his great surprise - was that very little of the advice in the bird books was appropriate for dealing with aggressive birds. So, through trial and error, he learned how to work with them.

One of the many qualities that made Ken so successful with birds was his patience - he could simply persist until a bird decided that being aggressive wasn't working to drive Ken away. Another quality that served him so well was his flexibility - if one thing didn't work to calm a bird, he'd try something else until he made progress. (Parenthetically, it's a quality that also made him a great father.)

When my parents reached an age when they were no longer able to run a demanding business, Ken went out on his own, doing private training sessions for bird owners. It was at one of those sessions where an immensely grateful client said, "Ken, you really are a bird whisperer."

Ken called me and mentioned the incident, and I suggested he use the name The Bird Whisperer because I thought it would quickly convey what he was capable of doing. But he was reluctant to use the name because he thought some people might think it was a bit pretentious. As a marketer, I reasoned that, at the very least, it was very easy for people to remember, where Ken Globus was not. He finally agreed.

Over the years, a lot has been written and said about Ken's techniques. You are certainly free to dismiss what I'm about to say as the biased rantings of a grieving brother, but I was simply blown away by what Ken was able to do with birds. I traveled with him both to private sessions and public workshops, and I watched him calm birds that couldn't even be touched by their owners. I saw people sobbing at the the sight of Ken stroking a bird's neck, a bird who wouldn't allow even its owner to come near it for over a decade. And I saw this happen many times.

His bird-training sessions really picked up when he set up his web site. For the first time, people outside of the Los Angeles area where he lived could get a sense of what his techniques were all about. He began to be interviewed by news organizations, magazines and newspapers, all of them interested in how he was able to tame birds so quickly. He was hired by zoos, bird stores, and rescue organizations to deal with birds they'd given up on. And somewhere along the line, Ken got a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Kate Capshaw. Thinking it was a joke perpetrated by one of his friends, Ken hung up on her. She called back and informed him that she and her husband, Steven Spielberg, would like Ken to come to their house for a private session. He gulped, and agreed. And as Ken showed Kate how to handle the bird, Steven walked all around him with a video camera, recording the entire hour-long session. Talk about pressure!

Through his many interviews and public appearances, Ken got to be pretty adept at dealing with one kind of pressure or another. The type that gave him the biggest problem came from his detractors who often wrote vicious and totally untrue things about him, and he would sometimes forward to me the more outrageous items. Usually we would giggle like schoolgirls, but I found some of these things to be appallingly mean-spirited, and I would want him to post an angry rebuttal. But, for the most part, he wouldn't. He simply felt that these people were uninformed. I always thought that was a most charitable way of looking at it, especially considering that many of the most shamelessly idiotic things were perpetrated by some of the more authoritative people in the bird world, people who felt more comfortable sniping at him from a distance rather than bothering to actually attend one of his events. But I digress.

What Ken was able to do with birds wasn't magic. Ken was just an incredibly sensitive and intuitive person who, in a very short span of time, could figure out the best way to get a bird over its fears. At this I'm fairly certain there were few like him.

I can also tell you that as a brother, there were none like him. He was kind, funny, incredibly bright, supportive, generous, and courageous - qualities he displayed up to his dying breath.

Last week there was an occasion I'll never forget. It was only a few days after his passing, and my wife wanted to put together a "remembrance", where a few friends could gather to talk about what Ken meant to them. Even though this was thrown together at the last minute, over 60 of his friends showed up, and I'm certain that, given enough time, a few hundred might have been there. Ken was loved and appreciated by so many people. There were folks there from various stages of his life, all relating stories about Ken that helped to paint a complete picture of him. And what a picture it was!

He was a great guy. A talented man who could do so many things well. And he was my best friend for 57 years.

- Dennis Globus