Our lives are measured in minutes. The minutes that matter, and then all the other minutes. I call the minutes that matter, the “Cash In” minutes.

The “Cash In” minutes are those in which something wonderful happens: your special friend says, “Yes;” your report card is your best one ever; you’ve been hired for your dream job!

How do we maximize our “Cash In” minutes? I’ll answer that with a classic joke.

A man carrying a violin case was rushing through Times Square.  A stranger stopped him and asked, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

The violinist shook his head, and said, “Practice, practice, practice.”

I am the son of a man whose profession was playing the French Horn in orchestras that created the soundtrack for major motion pictures. I believe he played in the orchestra that recorded the soundtrack for “The Sound of Music,” and also for “Around the World in Eighty Days.” I imagine both of those experiences were filled with “Cash-In” minutes.

But dad practiced on his French Horn for two or three hours daily.  Musicians at that time, were only permitted by the Musician’s Union to work a maximum of ten hours a week. So there were a lot more practice hours than “Cash-In” hours for my dad.

But isn’t that the way the world works?   Every day we’re mostly preparing for the “Big Show.”  (To a baseball player that would be the World Series, to a poet, winning the Pulitzer, and to an entrepreneur, a successful company launch.) While “Cash-In” moments might be different for each of us, we all have to put in enough practice time to give ourselves the best chance at achieving those moments.

Today I’m writing my blog. Tomorrow you’ll be reading it.

Cash In moments for us both.

Thanks.

Alan

Shortly after we arrived in Tokyo for a three-week vacation, I needed to be seen by a doctor in the central hospital because there was a little blood in my urine.

The Japanese doctor seemed quite competent, but when he threaded a catheter as part of the exam – suffice it to say I felt quite uncomfortable for a minute or two.

As a way to distract myself… I began to hum.

I didn’t hum just anything. I hummed a song I had first heard in 1953, the year that the movie LILI was first released in U. S. theaters. (click here to see a clip of Leslie Caron as a. 16-year-old waif, singing the song.)

The lyrics aren’t as important, but obviously the catchy tune was memorable enough that I have carried it along with me for more than seventy years.

And what a great distraction it was. As I hummed the tune, over and over, I was thinking more about what the doctor was thinking about my humming than I was about what he was doing to me. Isn’t it amazing how humming a little tune can make a frightening situation better.

For the rest of our cruise around Japan the high points for me were both the friendly Japanese people and our day in Busan, South Korea.

We’re back now, but my favorite moment during the entire three weeks was – as usual – walking into my bedroom at home after we returned.

I’ll be seeing a local medical specialist to follow up. Perhaps I’ll hum a happy tune through the exam… Hi Lili, Hi Lili, Hi Lo.

Alan

Somber.

That word fills me as I visit the city that was devastated (there is no other term that will describe it) by an atomic bomb – the first ever to be detonated over a populated area. The second was detonated over Nagasaki a few days later at the end of WW II.

We took the attached photo of the domed building at ground zero, through the arc of a memorial to peace that was later erected.

Hiroshima was bombed when I was five years old. It was a day when people were going about their ordinary activities – taking a bus to work, raising their children, and planning for their future.

On August 6, 1945, the population of Hiroshima was approximately 350,000. In an instant, the dreams and lives of more than 100,000 of those souls abruptly ended.

Today’s population is well over 1,000,000, and the city supports a major baseball team.

Japan and America are now close allies.

Irony is part of life.

Alan