And even if this time of year is still a bit unpredictable weather-wise, and it throws us for a loop with a few more cold snaps, and possibly even—gasp–snow (!), there’s that delightful hopefulness that nonetheless perseveres when one starts to enjoy the earliest signs of Nature’s bounty from the window.  The deadwood is falling away, and will soon be obscured as the green leaves and colorful gardens start to fill in the stark gaps of a long, dreary, damp winter.  Space must be made, for the new season is, we can rest assured, coming.  Some things you can just count on.

I find this to be a wonderful time of year to think about clearing away, and finding renewal in the space that’s created.  Nature does it automatically.  I imagine the term, “spring cleaning,” was born out of this natural rhythm to sweep out the old and to re-freshen, renew.  In our day-to-day living, this manifests in, say, finally getting around to cleaning out that hallway closet or the attic or garage.  It’s time.

There’s newness of some sort waiting just around the corner; waiting for space to be created, then the new can step in and start to bloom, start to live, start to take up some of its rightful place.

Really, though, it’s the internal spaces of our lives that need our careful attention, and spring is the perfect time for this care, this mindfulness, to come alive.  My question to you is:  What deadwood are you dragging around that’s become ready for you to sweep aside?  And in the process of letting go, what is waiting to come into your life that’s lighter, healthier, more rewarding, filled with hope?

When I give talks about relationships, or self-esteem, or personal growth, I say that when you let go of the one unhealthy relationship in your life, you are then free to turn in another direction, and open your arms to welcome the 10 healthy relationships that have been waiting in line to meet you.  They’re there, just as surely as winter steps aside to allow for spring.  And they may be relationships of all kinds, with people, things, and situations.  That which no longer serves you—from the dust in the attic to the unhealthy partnership, from the dead twigs in the yard to the abusive work situation, from the guilt that burdens you to the fears that hold you back—must, at some point, be swept aside to make room for the exciting, new, healthy changes that await you.

This is about your worlds, external and internal.  “Freeing up” happens outside yourself and within yourself.  Sure, there’s “stuff” around you to be cleaned out, to finally be free of.  But let’s think about the “stuff” on the inside.  What’s keeping your heart from loving?  What’s keeping your soul from being free?  What’s keeping you from acting the fool, taking the risk, going out on the limb…living the life you’re meant to live, in surround sound and full color?  This is the perfect time, because it’s spring and because there’s no time like the present to ponder these very ideas.  Your self-esteem requires it.  Your ability to enjoy your life feeds off it.  And your relationships can’t possibly blossom without it.

So the questions I encourage you to ask yourself this spring are:
1. What am I holding onto that I need to release?
2. Why is it hard for me to let go?
3. Where did I learn about holding tightly versus letting go freely, and does this still serve me?
4. What would I welcome into my life right now?
5. What kind of space do I need to create in order to have what I truly want?
6. How will I create that space?

Give these some serious thought, some energy, some meditation.  And maybe don’t worry so much about getting to that hallway closet.  It’s your soul that needs you.

Until next time:  “You become 21, turn 30, push 40, reach 50, make it to 60, and hit 70.  After that it’s a day-by-day thing!”  — George Carlin.

Dr. Rick Pimental-Habib, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, minister, and educator, in private practice in Chattanooga, and the author of “Empowering the Tribe” and “The Power of a Partner.”  Visit his new wellness center, Well Nest, at www.WellNestChattanooga.com, and his website at www.DrRPH.com.

It used to be that every man wore one of two different kinds of work attire—the white collar kind or the blue collar kind. The latter usually worked for the former. The white collar guys shook a lot of hands, ate a lot of lunch and signed a lot of documents that paved the way for how much crap the blue collar guys were going to have to put up with to actually get things done. Because, as everyone knows, it’s usually the blue collar guys who are left to do whatever the white collar guys think up.

As the kid of a white collar guy, I vividly remember watching my dad tie his tie in the mirror each morning before grabbing his hard-sided Samsonite briefcase (which I never actually saw him open), kissing my mother good-bye and heading off for another day at “the office.”

Contrary to popular culture, his wasn’t one of those clean-cut flannel, straight-leg, thin-tie with matching fedora kind of suits like TV’s Don Draper dons (no pun). No, in the seventies, “business” suits consisted of massively large print, 100 percent flammable double-knit polyester with bell-bottom pants and ties wide enough to virtually render a dress shirt unnecessary.

When my dad returned home promptly at 5:15 in the afternoon to greet my mother in the kitchen where she was cooking dinner, his tie would always be loosened some to convey the image that obviously work was tough that day. Of course, while my dad was babysitting graphic designers and writers, my mom was left with two little hellions and three meals to cook.

I always felt sorry for my dad for having to put the suit back on every Sunday morning for church after spending five of the other six says in it. I guess that’s why he wouldn’t wear anything but T-shirts and blue jeans on Saturdays—no matter what. I think that even if one of us had been up for a Grammy, Emmy, or even the Nobel Prize, if the ceremony happened on a Saturday he’d try to attend in the T-shirt without the oil stain on it.

I always had a Sunday suit growing up. I kinda dug dressing up from time to time. Made me feel older. I’d always choose mine from the three-piece kid’s suit rack at Sears. Polyester, corduroy or even topstitch denim—it didn’t matter as long as there was a cool vest in there.

By the time I was in college, suits really fell out of favor with anyone other than those trying to make some sort of name for themselves outside of the fraternity house. There’s a 10-year period where I can’t remember owning a suit. I might have had a sport coat, but nothing matching for sure.

Graduation time rolled around and I remember considering a suit once more for job interviews. But I had chosen advertising as my career path and had even worked in it for several of my college years, so I knew that the last thing a creative director wanted to see on a prospective copywriter was a suit and tie. Funky facial hair, wild shoes, cool nicknames—now that says creative.

And even though now my day job is occupying a cube for one of the larger employers here in town, I still haven’t let my career dictate my wardrobe like back in the white and blue collar days. I wear things that I like, that may or may not look good on me, but are comfortable. And that’s what those creative types with the pencil-thin goatees have figured out—comfortable employees are happier and more productive.

People who save lives or repair air conditioning systems still wear uniforms. But that’s just because they don’t want to get any gross substances on the clothes they would likely prefer to wear.

Maybe that’s why me and the suits don’t get along. My generation has figured out that it’s not what you wear that makes you successful—it’s what’s between your ears that really counts.

Chuck Crowder is a local writer and general man about town. His opinions are just that. Everything expressed is loosely based on fact, and crap he hears people talking about. Take what you just read with a grain of salt, but pepper it in your thoughts. And be sure to check out his popular website www.thenoog.com

So given the calendar date, you probably expect me to talk about Saint Patrick’s Day:   The second-most celebrated holiday in all of Drunkendom for debauchery and hedonism, after New Years Eve; a night in which every man feels he is just Irish enough to pop his wife in the eye after a long night of drunk driving, and every wife feels she is just Irish enough to do…whatever it is Irish women do outside of working as prostitutes and washing laundry in troughs as depicted in cinema set in the 16th to 18th centuries.  (I live in the Southeastern United States and have seen no other evidence of what it is such women do; blame the arts if you think me an “arse”, whatever the hell that is in “American”.)

Outside of the above, I have no real opinion of St. Patrick’s Day other than the appreciation of the irony that he was never actually canonized by a pope, making it as legitimate a holiday for drinking to excess as Groundhog’s Day or Fire Prevention Week. Come to think of it though, I’ve never bothered legitimizing any other day I drank to excess myself…so maybe I’m just Irish too?  I don’t stink like a brewery below a brothel at the moment though, so I doubt it.  (A joke, you bleary-eyed Micks.  Settle down and roll your glazed-over eyes elsewhere.)

No.  This week, I’m more tempted to write about the stabbing of Caesar on the Ides of March (March 15) than I am about a forgotten non-saint…someone in history that died as they looked into the unexpected treachery of their unexpected killers’ eyes.  Yet still, I do not put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) about him despite the treachery I see and feel.

This week, I write about a nearly unknown man by the name of Aleksei Leonev.  Not a cop, not even an American…but a man who on March 18 of 1965 was the first human being to turn the handle on a hatch and step into the vacuum of space.

Imagine the isolation and fear of turning that handle and stepping into a void literally larger than the imagination.  Stepping into nowhere and onto nothing for the first time.  Floating on a tether and seeing the whole of creation below you, and about you, and the loneliness of that choice and the wonder if you’d make it back.  A far cry from my own job working the projects on midnight shift, but a distant cousin nonetheless.

Isolation.  Fear.  Confidence.  All at once.  Most people don’t know it (much less his name), but after 12 minutes in space, when he finally got back to his Voskhod 2 spacecraft, his suit had inflated to the point where he could no longer re-enter the airlock.  Forget about your lack of interest in science fiction; can you imagine that?  He actually had to float there in a vacuum for the first time in history, hundreds of miles above Earth, and had to open a freakin’ valve in his space suit by hand long enough to allow pressure to bleed off enough to fit back into the capsule.  (And you thought waiting on a home pregnancy test or a court verdict was a “long, tense time”.  Amazing.)
Like I said…  little to do with police work per se—but isn’t it, really?  One man in a suit, under scrutiny, floating alone in a vacuum trying to keep his wits, only to find the simple task of returning home filled with mortal doubt and fear.  And guts.  Lots of guts.  Yeah, I think it’s related, however distant and presumptuous.

We all feel alone, some more than others…but there are those willing to take that first step onto nothing, into nothingness.  And then there are those that will do it night after night, no matter the isolation, the fear.

Thanks, folks.  Unlike Aleksei, some of you never made it back, but most of you do it despite this knowledge.  So…thanks.  It gives the rest of us fools the courage to do the same, despite the treachery and debauchery of the other “holidays”.

(Aleksei Leonev is still alive at age 75, by the way. Give him a thought, and all the other handles into the unknown folks turn alone, night after night.)

For the rest of my customers?  “Single Parents Day” is on the 21st.  Look it up.

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.

Australia’s wine industry is the fourth largest in the world, after France, Italy and the United States.  Australia has had vineyards since English and Irish settlers planted seeds sometime in the early 1700s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that Australian wine began to surpass jug wine quality.  By the late 1970s, the wine industry was producing outstanding varietals that the world began to notice.

Shiraz is Australia’s most widely planted grape and places seventh in the entire world.  Called “syrah” in other parts of the world, it is believed to have originated in France.  Australians called shiraz “Hermitage” up into the late 1980s, but the French put a halt to that with their “protected designation of origin”.  Since there is a city in Iran called Shiraz, it is believed the grape may have originated there and was then brought to France—which would disprove the French’s claim to ownership.  Whichever story you choose to believe, shiraz is now a grape much loved by red wine drinkers around the world.

Shiraz grows best in three of South Australia’s prime growing regions: Mclaren Vale, Langmore Creek and Clare Valley.  What makes Shoofly Shiraz unique is that it utilizes shiraz grown in each of these regions.  Langmore Creek provides its vineyards excellent irrigation from the River Bremer and has a long history of winemaking.  The Mclaren Vale region offers the perfect climate for the growth of shiraz: a dry spring and summer with cool nights and short, cool, wet winters.  The Clare Valley is the oldest of the three wine regions. Located 120 kilometers north of Adelaide, its high altitude ensures cool-to-cold nights and warm-to-hot days with rainy winters and dry summers—all ideal climate for healthy vines.

Shoofly Shiraz 2008 is dark purple in color and made from the best shiraz grapes grown in the three above named regions, hand selected, pressed and aged in both American and French oak.  It contains strong aromas of violets, plums and blueberries that turn to luscious flavors of cedar and spice on the palate.  You might say the 2008 had a tough act to follow with the 2007 vintage being picked by Wine Spectator as one of the top 100 wines in the world for 2009, placing 51st.  Well, I would be surprised if the 2008 doesn’t do just as well next November when the new list is released.  Shoofly Shiraz 2008 is available at Riley’s for $9.98 plus tax.

Cheers!

ARIES (March 21-April 19): From what I can tell, your excursion to Fake Paradise didn’t exact too serious a toll. The accidental detour may have seemed inopportune in the moment, but you know what? I think it slowed you down enough to keep you from doing something rash that you would have regretted later. And are you really sorry you were robbed of your cherished illusions? In the long run, I think it was for the best. As for the scratches on your nose from when you stuck it into business you weren’t “supposed” to: They’re a small price to pay for the piquant lesson you got in how not to live.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Some people are here on the planet to find success, while others are here to find themselves. In the big scheme of things, I’m not sure which category you fit into, Taurus. But I’m pretty sure that for the next few weeks you’ll be best served by acting as if you’re the latter. Even if you think you’ve found yourself pretty completely in the past, it’s time to go searching again: There are new secrets to be discovered, in large part because you’re not who you used to be. So for now at least, I encourage you to give your worldly ambitions a bit of a rest as you intensify your self-explorations.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Being a paragon of moral behavior can be fun and rewarding. It’s amazing how many interesting people want to play with me just because they think I’m so #%&@ high-minded. But I’ve got to confess that my commitment to discipline and righteousness is sometimes at odds with my rebellious itch to give you mischievous nudges and outrageous challenges. Like right now, the conscientious teacher in me might prefer to advise you to keep a lid on debauchery, voracity, excess, uproar, slapstick, wise-cracking, fireworks, and limit-pushing. But the rabble-rousing agitator in me feels obligated to inform you that at no other time in 2010 will the karmic price be lower for engaging in such pursuits.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): It’s time for you to stop specializing in furtive glimpses and start indulging in brazen gazes. You’re ready to phase out your role as a peripheral influence and see if you can be more of a high-intensity instigator and organizer. Yes, Cancerian, you’ve earned the right to claim more credibility and clout—to leave your tentative position outside the magic circle and head in the direction of the sweet hot spot.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy,” wrote Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. “If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe . . . No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.” (Dillard’s entire passage is here: http://bit.ly/TinkerCreek.) Reading this passage is a good way for you to prepare for the immediate future, Leo. Why? Because you’ll soon be invited to commune with outlandish glory. You’ll be exposed to stories that burst from the heart of creation. You’ll be prodded to respond to marvelous blips with marvelous blips of your own. But here’s the catch: It may all remain invisible to you if you’re blinded by the false belief that you live a boring, ordinary life.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The storm is your friend right now, Virgo. So are the deep, dark night and the last place you’d ever think of visiting and the most important thing you’ve forgotten about. So be more willing than usual to marinate in the mysteries—not with logical ferocity but with cagey curiosity. The areas of life that are most crucial for you to deal with can’t be fully understood using the concepts your rational mind favors. The feelings that will be most useful for you to explore are unlike those you’re familiar with.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Here’s your mantra for the coming week: “I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.” Say it and sing it and murmur it at least 100 times a day. Let it flow out of you after you’ve awoken each morning and are still lying in bed. Let it be the last sound on your lips as you drop off to sleep. Have fun with it. Dip into your imagination to come up with different ways to let it fly—say it as your favorite cartoon character might say it, like a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot, like a grinning sage. “I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Have you ever heard about how some all-night convenience stores blast loud classical music out into the parking lot in order to discourage drug dealers from loitering? In the coming days, use that principle whenever you need to drive home a point or make a strong impression. Your aggressive expressions will be more effective if you take the darkness and anger out of them, and instead fill them up with forceful grace and propulsive compassion.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Hebrew word chalom means “dream.” In his book Healing Dreams, Marc Ian Barasch notes that it’s derived from the verb “to be made healthy and strong.” Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that chalom is related to the Hebrew word hachlama, which means “recovery, recuperation.” Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I’ve got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean “dreams” in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you’re sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you’d like to become.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I just found out the American shipping company UPS has legally trademarked the color brown. The grass-roots activist in me is incredulous and appalled. But the poet in me doesn’t really care; it’s fine if UPS owns drab, prosaic brown. I’ve still got mahogany at my command, as well as tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna. That’s especially important for this horoscope, Capricorn, because I’m advising you to be very down to earth, be willing to get your hands dirty, and even play in the muck if necessary in order to take good care of the basics. But don’t do any of that in a boring, humdrum “brown” way. Do it exotically and imaginatively, like mahogany, tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You are hereby excused from having to know a single nuance about the inside story of Angelina Jolie’s secret love tryst with Lady Gaga, or the addictions of conspiracy theorists who lose huge sums of money gambling on the end of the world, or the agony that millionaires suffer from having to support social services with their taxes. In fact, it’s a good time to empty your mind of extraneous, trivial, and useless facts so that you can clear vast new spaces for more pressing data, like how you can upgrade your communication skills, why you should do some upkeep on your close alliances, and what you might do to streamline your social life.

Homework: I’ve got two favors to ask of you. No pressure! I’ll still love you if you can’t help. Go here for more info: http://bit.ly/TwoFavors

Dear Mexican,
By now, I’m sure you’re aware of all the hate crimes against Hispanics in the last few years. By now, I’m sure you’re thinking that this is ¡Ask a Mexican!, not ¡Ask a Hispanic! But let me tell you that all the hate crimes against Hispanics have been because they’ve been thought to be Mexican and at least half—if not more—of those hate crime victims have actually been Mexican. So, my question to you is: Can’t you pathetic losers defend yourselves?

Not only do these white guys take your women, but they kick the crap out of you guys all over America. Take the Luis Ramirez incident from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, for example. The racist pigs who fucked his ass up and killed him were found not guilty by an all-white jury. Why the hell didn’t the Mexicans of Shenandoah come together and riot? That little tiny hick of a town would have been burned to the ground in a matter of hours. I mean, I can see why they hate you people so much.
You disgusting things come here illegally, you don’t bother to learn English and expect everybody else to learn Spanish. You guys like to use somebody else’s Social Security number to work. I can go on all day long with the shit you people do. Basically, you people like to milk the cow that is America, but you do not feed it.

It seems you all are taking over the whole damn country! Yet it doesn’t give these racist cockroach motherf***ers the right to come after you all. Which brings me to my previous question: Why can’t you spineless wetbacks strike back?
— Embarrassed to be Latino

Dear Wab,
Nice to know Latinos can be as stupidly aggressive as the San Diego Minutemen! To quote ranchera icon Vicente Fernandez, “La migra a mi agarró/Trescientas veces, digamos/Pero jamas me domó/A mi me hizo los mandados/Los golpes que a mi me dío/Se los cobré a sus paisanos.” Translation for the gabachos and you, coño: better to beat bozos with punitive damages instead of putazos—the former hurt more!

Dear Mexican,
I hear so many gringos saying that Mexican men are stinky and greasy! Well, I know from experience this is so not true! So what’s up with the misconception? I never met a greasy, stinky Mexican! And my mexicano novio is always very clean, never greasy and smells great! I am a gringa myself, so what’s wrong with my people? Why do they think this way about mexicanos?
— La Gringita Bonita Dulcita

Dear Pretty, Sweet-Tasting Gabacha,
The Mexican turns this question over to his Mexican, Dr. William Nericcio of San Diego State University, author of the scurrilous Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the ‘Mexican’ in America: “Tales of ethnicities and nationalities being able to sense each other litter the history books and the floors of water coolers the world over; so it is that the Japanese can ‘smell’ Americans (apparently we OD on milk products producing an olfactory side-effect that floors Kyotans, Godzilla and more), Mengele and the Nazis could out a Jew on the spot with their rulers, calipers, and measurements tables; and, of course, Mexicans…well, we just plain stink. Or so the story goes.

No doubt the shared wisdom that declares we stink derives from the same source that says we’re ‘dirty.’ Most, if not all of these tales derive from Pershing’s American Expeditionary force that invaded Northern Mexico (with Patton and Eisenhower along for the ride, no less) in 1916. American fools from Maine to Poughkeepsie took their jingoistic xenophobia with them to the lands of Zapata and Villa and came away convinced that Mexicans were dirty—in this regard, they mirrored the motherland’s (England) view of the Spanish and joined a long tradition of loathing that characterizes the relationship between folks who speak English and those that prefer Spanish.” Translation or us proles: don’t gabachos stink to high heaven?

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, facebook.com/garellano, youtube.com/askamexicano, find him on, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815.

Since I purchased my “smart phone” some months back, I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it.  I love the features, the impressive memory, the Bluetooth, and how it keeps on ticking despite being dropped onto hard surfaces, ejecting its little battery clear across the driveway in the process.

What puzzles me about it is that it sometimes performs functions without my knowledge or direction, or so it seems, anyway.  Occasionally I look down to find that I’m on the Internet.  What?  How long have THOSE charges been incurring?  Or I see that it’s calling voicemail for me.  Thanks, but—I didn’t request that.  Did I?

I keep it handy all day long, alert for calls and messages, and check it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  So it can’t be feeling neglected.  Perhaps unloved.  Or maybe, just maybe, this smart phone is trying to show me that it’s smarter than I.

Whatever its issue might be (funny how it’s taking on human dimension as this relationship progresses), “Smartie” got its revenge recently.  Betty Lou, my wonderpup, and I were getting ready to go for a drive to do some errands. When the truck was warmed up and I was ready to go, I called to her, in that conversational tone I usually use.

“OK, Betty, let’s go.  You ready?  Did you piddle?  Do you need to poop, too?  I can wait, but I think you’re all set.  You look done.  Are you done?  OK, then…come on.  Come on.  Come on.  Betty!  Do you still have to pee?  Well, go ahead if you’re going to go, I’m not going to wait all day.  No?  You’re done?  OK, then come on. Good girl.  Now jump up.  Go ahead, jump.  You want Daddy to help you?  OK, come here.  Come here, I’ll help.  Well, turn around a bit…this way…no, this way…there ya go.  Good girl. Lie down.  Lie down, sweetie.  Lie down.  Good girl.  Off we go.  (subtle growl from the back seat) What?  What’s out the window?  What’s out there?  Do you still have to pee or not??”

I start backing out of the garage, and I suddenly hear a voice as clear as a bell in my right ear:  “If you’re happy with your message, press one.  To re-record, press two and begin speaking.”

What??  Who was I just calling?  Who’s about to hear my little “get ready for a road trip with the dog” conversation?  I was a touch paralyzed yet needed to find the phone—it was somewhere in the center console, but where?  And what if I don’t press one or two? Will it automatically send?  How much time do I have?  Oh, good grief, how do I shut this thing off before who-knows receives this message?

When I finally located the phone, I saw that my last call was to a colleague, and I had pocket-dialed her while I was getting into the car.  Oh, great.  This will instill lots of professional confidence! (Fortunately, she has a great sense of humor.)

The end of the story is that, to the best of my knowledge, I did NOT send the message.  And my own sense of humor returned, as I had a good chuckle at my own expense.  But I had my first experience with pocket-dialing.  And embarrassingly, there have been a few others since then.  Sooo…what do you think?  Is this a “fifty thing”?  Or just a modern technology thing?  I know the answer I’m hoping for.

Meanwhile, a good friend of mine sent a wonderful bit of George Carlin wisdom to me, and I’ll share the following excerpt with you.  Some of my younger readers may not relate to all of it, but there is something in here for everyone.  It’s called, “How to Stay Young.”  Enjoy.

1. Throw out nonessential numbers.  These include age, weight, and height.  Let the doctors worry about them.  That’s what you pay them for.
2. Keep only cheerful friends.  The grouches, critics, and narrow-minded ones will only pull you down.
3. Keep learning…about the computer, gardening, whatever.  Never let the brain idle.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and hard.  Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen.  Endure, grieve, and move on.  Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it’s family, pets, music, hobbies, whatever.
8. Cherish your health.  If it is good, preserve it.  If it is unstable, improve it.  If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9. Don’t take guilt trips.  Take a trip to the mall, to the next town, to a foreign country.  But NOT to where the guilt is.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them…at every opportunity.

Until next time:  “Fear is a reaction.  Courage is a decision.”  — Winston Churchill

Dr. Rick Pimental-Habib, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, minister, and educator, in private practice in Chattanooga, and the author of “Empowering the Tribe” and “The Power of a Partner.”  Visit his new wellness center, Well Nest, at www.WellNestChattanooga.com, and his website at www.DrRPH.com.

Since St. Paddy’s almost always falls on a weekday, the couple-times-a-year partier will likely belly up for his pint or two (at the most) of green beer right after work—around five o’clock. That means anyone who really wants to go out that night shouldn’t hit the pubs until about seven. By then, the work-a-day “likes to have a glass of wine with dinner” wild child will either be in line at the Krystal, or calling a cab.

Given that, it’s obviously not just the Irish who celebrate this glorious “holiday.” Or maybe it is. Who’d know? Through our mixed-up lineages of diverse family backgrounds married-in-here and having-babies-there, we Americans are the purest breed of Heinz 57 known to man. That makes us all 1/10th Irish…and English, French, Scottish, African, Asian, Leprechaun.

But regardless of where we came from, America’s red, white and blue turns green for 24 hours in March and everyone must celebrate—with liquor. Now, no one likes a cold refreshing adult beverage more than this McNoogan, but like all libation lovers I hate drinking holidays. That’s when the novices come out and incite road blocks for us all.
Almost as annoying is the fact that anywhere they would have spent their happy hour will be full of green and white Miller Lite banners, four leaf clover streamers and people wearing green plastic derbys that scream “look at me, I’m the driver you need to look out for on your way home.”

Irish pubs especially drive me bananas. The traditional folk songs about drinking, shillelaghs or somebody’s Irish rose are stout enough to drive you to too many lagers. You can go to an English pub and hear the Stones, Beatles or Kinks on the jukebox all day long. But in a true Irish pub, you’ll be lucky to catch Van Morrison, or even The Pogues. And God forbid they break out the U2. If it doesn’t have flute or fiddle then song be damned!

And good old Saint Patrick wouldn’t have it any other way. For, as the patron saint of inebriation, he proudly looks down on the lush green pastures and potato fields of his promised land each March and casts a rainbow-gold glow of whiskey and grog on all good Irishmen.

I’ve never been to Ireland, but an ex-girlfriend of mine lived there for a couple of years. She didn’t have a whole lot of good things to report back. It seems the constantly overcast skies and/or rain will drive you to the pub more often than you care to mention. Maybe that’s why she also said that despite what some might say, Guinness is by far the country’s biggest export as well as its most gracious supporter. Seems in Dublin, it’s the Guinness Museum of Art, the Guinness Library, the Guinness Homeless Shelter, etc. and so on.

She also didn’t mention much about rolling fields of clover, or as we say on March 17, shamrock. Folklore has it that St. Patrick used its three-leaf sprouts to describe the holy trinity. I guess the rogue appendage of the occasional four-leaf variety was considered lucky because it meant a free round of shots or something like that.

But despite all of St. Paddy Day’s quirkiness and amateur tomfoolery, you’ve got to have a little respect for an annual tradition that wasn’t invented by the greeting card or floral industry and continues to inspire Chicago to color its normally brown inner-city river a healthy shade of green. So go ahead—erin go braugh from pub to pub and have some fun on Wednesday. Maybe we’ll run into each other…after seven of course.

Chuck Crowder is a local writer and general man about town. His opinions are just that. Everything expressed is loosely based on fact, and crap he hears people talking about. Take what you just read with a grain of salt, but pepper it in your thoughts. And be sure to check out his popular website www.thenoog.com

The mayor opened with statements expressing empathy for the family and praise for the professionalism of his police chief and the hard work that their men and women do tirelessly day in and day out.  About their heroism and magnificence, and the opulent beauty of all things law enforcement when credit for its actions can be used for political gain so long as everything went absolutely, perfectly well.  (The last bit wasn’t verbalized, but it’s implied since there are only two cases in the last century in which a municipality backed up an officer when a split-second decision went bad, despite a flawless prior record.  Hey, I don’t make the rules.  Literally.)

He then began naming people for thanks as if receiving an Academy Award, and just like the Oscars, he began to well up with tears and speak in a choked voice.  The onlookers applauded their approval, and the mayor handed over the podium to the police chief, but not without pausing to embrace him for a close, borderline-uncomfortable hug.  Hey, “politics”.  No big deal.

The police chief then began to talk, his hair perfectly coiffed, brass stars shining on both his shoulder epaulets and collars for added effect.  He, too, espoused the endless toil of work that was law enforcement (day and night), the sunlight glistening on a brass whistle that air had never been blown through, hanging from an elaborate brass chain adorning his right breast pocket.  But then as he began to give up the podium to the next speaker…the chief began also began to speak in a cracked voice, his eyes moistening with emotion.  The crowd began a lighter applause, which then thinned further as the chief also felt the need to physically embrace the sheriff in his own mechanical and just-as-uncomfortable way.

As with his predecessors, the sheriff gave his own podium-gripping dissertation on the conditional “wonderfulness” that is All Things Police, but now the eyes of the reporters and onlookers were officially glazing over at the shallow repetition that is symbolic of torch-passing equal credit time.  Were it not for the distraction of the straining of his buttons on the thick khaki shirt he wore (apparently the issued uniform to old, fat, white sheriffs nationwide), people would have risked ignoring the Army marksmanship medals that served as exclamation points over his basketball-shaped potbelly.  Then I’ll be damned…he, too, began to cry.

And as they concluded the press conference?  All three slowly and mechanically hugged beyond the “grown son and father limit” yet again.

Was this a trick?  Was there a punch line coming?  Because to me, sober dudes don’t hug for five-to-ten seconds.  They sure as HELL don’t openly weep when they do, either.  And above all?  They do none of that crap when they’re dressed up as policemen (or “police-es” where I work), chiefs and sheriffs in particular.

We can’t catch criminals if it involves touching them, lest they be offended.  If caught, they have to want to go to jail, or they can choose otherwise (“How ’bout a suspended, y’Honah?”).  We can’t make the city leaders financially responsible…but we sure as hell can’t have police chiefs and sheriffs running around squirting tears all over the place.

Good LORD, America.  What has happened to you?  We went from smoking three packs a day and winning global wars with pure brute force and propaganda to our police leaders crying openly and crime running damn near rampant.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Stop “getting in touch with yourself”.  Quit “connecting with your emotions”.  You’re the COPS, not a support group!  You’re not there to make people feel good about themselves or become spiritually self-aware…you’re there to draw a line in the sand and say “DO NOT!” And you can’t do that if your mascara is running, sweetheart.

Let me spell it out:  Denial, repression, suppression and delusion are not necessarily tools of the trade, but they made our country great.  The closer we get to “making ourselves happy” and being completely emotionally vulnerable, the further we get from effectively dealing with predatory and otherwise vicious people. The nozzleheads and the head-shrinkers can think that way, but not us.  Not the police.  Crime is hard enough to deal with as it is…but when you’re holding each other and shooting tears and snot while you do so does nothing for the aforementioned line in the sand.  I’m not encouraging you to watch illegal dog fights daily, but damn.

Take notes, people.  Crying is great for escaping punishment and getting to sleep, but little else.  And damn-sure not for news conferences.

Do I have to do everything myself around here?  Am I, at last, the only one that cares enough…not to cry?

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.

Monte Antico is a winery located in Central Italy’s Tuscany growing region.  This is the same area that produces the world famous chianti wines.  Tuscany’s principal red wine grape is sangiovese, which got its name from the Latin sanguis Jovis—blood of Jupiter.  This grape originated in Tuscany and even predates the Romans.  If you like chianti, then you’ll love sangiovese.  Italian wine laws known as Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) specify that to be called “chianti”, the wine must contain at least 70 percent sangiovese and be grown within certain designated parameters and made according to certain standards.

In the late 1970s, the Italian wine industry was experiencing a decline in business.  Wine producers blamed the government’s DOC standards that deemed “approved” chianti wines of higher quality than those unapproved.  This, of course, was only a myth, but a damaging one nonetheless.  Consumers thought that the DOC’s pink stamp on the neck of a chianti bottle made it better than one without it.  It was in this confusion and climate of sagging wines sales that “Super Tuscans” were born.

Super Tuscans are high-quality wines made from grapes grown in the Tuscan wine region—but made outside of the DOC or DOCG wine classification system: aging in small oak barrels, and blending sangiovese with non-DOCG grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot.  Super Tuscans boosted Italy’s sagging wine industry and gave consumers more wines to choose from.

Monte Antico, which translates into “ancient mountain”, is located at the foothills of Tuscany’s towering mountains and was founded in 1972 by husband-and-wife team Neil and Marie Empson, who have since gained a reputation of crafting wines reflecting the reverence of Tuscany’s finest traditions of winemaking.  Their Toscana wine is made from hand-selected sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes grown 450 meters above sea level in the foothills of Monte Antico.  After pressing, the juice ferments for seven days in stainless steel vats. It is then aged for one year in small oak barrels.  Upon bottling, the wine ages six more months before shipping around the world.

Toscana 2006 is ruby red in color.  Aromas of leather, earth and herbs give over to a lush, full-bodied palate containing blackberries, licorice and plums followed by a soft, spicy finish.  Wine Spectator awarded Toscana 2006 by Monte Antico 90 points, ranking it number 61 of the 100 best wines released in 2009.  It is on sale at Riley’s for $11.23 per bottle ($12.99 regular price).

Cheers!