Glenna's contact information:[email protected]

We welcome back Paula Adler. Approximately 2 years ago Paula Adler left corporate America. Her goals were to build her own business, have more time to develop relationships, and travel. We rejoined Paula in her journey to find out what worked, what didn't work, what she's learned, and how she continues to reinvent herself.

Ang Oronoto, a "Personal Success Coach," helps people reimagine and reinvent themselves. "Our lives are a made up of individual spokes in a wheel. Unless you are constantly re-evaluating all of these spokes - your wheel won't roll and you are in for a bumpy ride!"

Health often negatively impacts even the best of plans. It is possible to plan around health issues.

Back in 1935 the US Government set normal retirement as age 65 as part of Social Security. But today the average male retiring at age 65 is expected to live for 18 years, only 10 to 15 of which are active. Retirement is often defined as "ending one's career in order to do what we want and enjoy life. So why do we wait so long to have so little time to enjoy life. Let's introduce the concept of "the Great Transition," going from where ever we might be today, to doing what we want and enjoying life ASAP.

Everyone needs a mid-life crisis on a regular or irregular basis. A mid-life crisis gives you a chance to re-orient your thoughts about yourself: What's your purpose, what do you want out of life, and what value are you bringing to others? Some coaches we've talked with recently think a mid-life crisis every 10 years or so would be a good thing, others think more often is necessary. Here's to YOUR next mid-life crisis!

Dr. Glat's Website:  https://www.drglat.com/?utm_source=GMB&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Balacynwyd

Listen to this episode of Random Thoughts and you'll never think about penguins the same way again. They traveled to Antarctica to experience the adventure but they put off taking the trip until they felt financially more secure. Now they have all the time and money they needed but they couldn't walk up the hill to see the penguins.

Tammi's Website:  https://www.blueprintprocess.com/

Kim Bulter's Website:  www.prosperitythinkers.comStrategic Coach:  www.strategiccoach.com

The week Ray talks with returning guest, Sarah Brown, Ph.D. She shares that knowing who you are, before you Change the Rules or Change the Game can head off frustration and improve the outlook for making changes to your life.

It was old. It should have been retired. But it was repurposed based on its strengths. It found a new mission. It became not only useful, but perhaps, the very best there was.

Sometimes people become stuck in difficult situations, such as jobs and relationships, and they struggle to find a way out. Despite their best efforts and reasoning skills, they cannot seem to overcome the obstacles that stand in their way. This can be frustrating and demoralizing. Bill Hughes, an experienced Life Coach, discusses solutions that lead to getting unstuck.

Each of us is a unique individual. Exploring that uniqueness, before trying to "Change the Rules" can head off frustration and improve results. In fact, embracing their own uniqueness is what truly defines the Luckiest People in the World. It's what gives them the freedom design and live their own lives, their way and become fulfilled and happy.

What does it really mean when we say change the rules? How does changing your environment change the rules? Sometimes changing the rules isn't enough, you need to change the game and maybe even create a new game.

For the Luckiest People in the World, expanding a routine event; creating a larger, more expansive event, can seem frivolous, But it can stimulate excitement and open new areas of the fascinating and motivating. The strategic by products can simply be amazing. Think Bigger, Enjoy Life!

When circumstances change, ie life gets in the way, how do you redesign your life? LeAnn Pugh talks about how she reached into her toolbox of past skills and applied them to find a solution and be able to work from home to accommodate health and family issues.

Julie's website:  www.pocketbooksshop.com

After recording over one hundred episodes interviewing other people on how they Change the Rules, Ray answers the question; "How does he Change the Rules?"

Ray Loewe recalls a story of a waitress wise beyond her years. He reflects on the importance of taking responsibility for everything in your life. Only then can you fix those problems you'll confront as you journey through it.

This week our guest host Dale Johnson continues his interview with Eldon Gemmill. Eldon has embraced many elements of a traditional lifestyle. However, he also loves to include adventure into his life. This episode covers a mountaineering expedition in Arctic Canada and a canoe expedition exploring blank areas of the map in South America.

This week Ray talks about a new piece of artificial intelligence software and the amazing answers it gives to questions. In this case, Ray asked: "What are some of the barriers to designing your own life?" Listen in for the answer.

This week our guest host Dale Johnson interviews Eldon Gemmill. Eldon has embraced many elements of a traditional lifestyle. However, he has changed some rules so that he can still incorporate adventure into his life. When we talk about adventure, Eldon has taken that word to a different level.

Rick Paine's company:  American College ConnectionRick Paine's website:  https://accrecruits.com/

Who will advocate for you when you can't advocate for yourself? Who will make decisions on your behalf if you aren't able to? Three parts to this decision: how do you choose the people who will look after you in an ever-changing environment; how do you empower them to get the information they need; how do you give them the power to act on your behalf - the documents and the possession of the documents.

Guest host Dale Johnson interviews Dawn Ritter-Fischer whose motto is "Let’s Not Play Small". Dawn is a solo female nomad traveler who changes the rules and travels the world capturing hearts and minds while getting to know her own.

Jim Comey's Website:  https://www.stagesofimagination.org/ 

This week Ray talks with John Comey. John's career took him from member of the news team of a major tv network affiliate to spokesman and strategist for Pennsylvania's emergency management agency.

Dr. Nancy Loane discusses her book, Following the Drum: Women at the Valley Forge Encampment, published in 2009. After a career in education, Nancy took a job as a Seasonal Ranger at Valley Forge National History Park and fell in love with the park's story. This led to her book and to another one she's now working on.

Bonnie's Website:  www.MariposaPhotoOrganizing.comBonnie's YouTube Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMjKpUeiB-o&t=1797sTranscription:Intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:20Hello, everybody, and welcome to Changing the Rules. You know, Changing the Rules is about the fact that we're all given too many rules in life. They start with our parents, and then the schools, and then the church. And before we know it, our lives are cluttered with rules. And rules do two things: they tell us what we have to do, and what we can't do. And the next thing we know, we're living other people's lives and not our own. So Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple said, when you're living your life by other people's rules, you're not living your life. And we represent here the luckiest people in the world who run off, design their own lives and live them under their own terms. And we have one of those people with us. Bonnie Shay is a person who I've known for a good number of years. I won't tell you how many because I met her when she was very young. She has a company called Mariposa Photo Organizing, and she does some really unique things with old photos to organize them for people. So Bonnie, say hi to everybody. Bonnie Shay01:34Hello, everybody!Ray Loewe01:35No. Hi, everybody. See, there you are, you're breaking the rules already! So tell us in a minute or two, what you generally do for people and how you've specialized over the years.Bonnie Shay01:51So I have helped my clients with their photo collections, and I've narrowed it down to the printed photo part of their collections because that's what I love doing. I just love tangible photos. And to me, Ray, those photos are at the highest risk of a: being lost or damaged in the natural disasters that we unfortunately have or a fire a flood. But also, I feel like the printed photos, since they typically are of older nature, I want to make sure their stories are told before the people behind the stories that know the story, aren't here to tell them. Because I'm all about someone being able to share their photos and leave a legacy with their photos.Ray Loewe02:36Cool. Okay, so I'm shutting you up here. So, I actually have a hidden agenda, and I'm gonna get to what I want to get to. But first, when you go get a new client, you're picking up a box of photos. Bonnie Shay02:55Well, I'm gonna have to correct you, Ray. It's not a box of photos. It could be 17 boxes of photos, but you're right.Ray Loewe03:03Okay, so typically, why do people hire you? They have these boxes of photos, what do they want out of it, where are they going with them?Bonnie Shay03:13So when a potential client reaches out, basically, they are overwhelmed with their lifetime of printed photos that are in lots of boxes and albums. And they just haven't looked at them most likely in a long time, because they've been probably hiding around in their whole house in different places. And so my clients are stuck, they don't know what to do, they don't know where to go with their printed photos. In their mind it is like this big mountain of photos, and they don't know how to attack it. It's basically a big mess, and I don't say that in a critical fashion. But if you're a boss, and the boss says they're in various states of disarray or order, and what do we do with them? So I basically come in and lead the clients through what I call my curation process, because we want to make sure this treasure of photos are in a state that are going to be shared, and managed, and fixed from any disaster.Ray Loewe04:07Okay, let me interrupt for a minute because I understand safe, you know, you want them to endure, and some of these are fragile. But what I'm really interested in here is what are people trying to do with these photos at the end. Or is it capturing stories? Is it just capturing images? You know, where are they going?Bonnie Shay04:35For me, it's all about the story, which is what these people want. It's the photographic story, but we want the text as well. And who is in the photos? Because basically, these clients want to leave this story to their kids and their grandkids. And it's their history. It's their family history, and it brings back memories and discussion topics because it's fun to see these old photos to talk about, oh, what happened back then? Or who was that? Oh my gosh, Mom, I've never seen you when you were 10 years old. That's you at two years old. So it's really good storytime that can be shared when the photos are available. Ray Loewe05:17Yeah, I can tell you right now, our engineer Luke is sitting here cringing that somebody would see a photo of him when he was two years old. Right? Okay, so back, you have a process for dealing with this. Take us quickly through the process so people know what you have to do. But then I want to come back and focus on the result and how when we take photos, we can make sure we get the results that we want.Bonnie Shay05:42Absolutely. So the basic process is a: you gather all these photos together, b: we want to put them in a general chronological order. And we're not going for perfection, but we like to see our stories played out over time. And then you want to edit them so we get a reasonable amount of photos that we're gonna eventually scan so that we can have them digitally. And I want to emphasize, and I'll probably say this several times during our podcast, Ray, we want to focus on quality, over quantity. Because even if we magically organize 30,000 photos of the printed photos, they're still going to be overwhelming. We want to get the highlights, the best of the best stories, and each photo needs to tell a story. And let me share one quick, or two quick ideas of how people can know what's good, and what's not when you're in the editing phase of looking at your photos. Number one, if you have a picture of the Eiffel Tower, that's the Eiffel Tower. To me, that's not memorable or meaningful, because any of us could go on the internet now and get a picture of the Eiffel Tower. But if you were standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, that makes a story that tells us, oh, you were in Paris.Ray Loewe06:55And I'd ruin the picture.Bonnie Shay06:58We'll talk about that later, Ray. You didn't break the camera, though so, we're okay. And then number two is we don't have to perfect photos. So when I tell my clients I'm editing your collection without their help, maybe because they're not able to help me, and I see a picture of a three-year-old with a chocolate covered face. Some people would say, well, that's a terrible picture. It's a mess. No, no, no throw it out. And I want to say no because maybe that was the child's first chocolate ice cream cone and there's a story behind that photo that we want to tell and preserve. So, it's all about storytelling in pictures that we want to have our quality, but they don't have to be perfect. And one other thing I want to suggest to people if you're going through your own printed photos, we remove duplicates, we remove redundant photos, we reduce and remove poor quality photos. Like if it's blurry or fuzzy. And we have better pictures than the blurry, fuzzy version. So it's all about editing. And then the end result is we end up with a much smaller quantity of photos. But we have meaningful stories, photos that can tell your story. And my clients are thrilled and relieved when we have a curated collection. And they don't have these boxes and boxes and boxes.Ray Loewe08:19Yeah, and sometimes people don't even know who the people were in these photos. So some of your job is trying to identify people. Trying to track them down and trying to put together the stories. Sometimes after the people that are involved aren't here anymore. Good luck.Bonnie Shay08:39Right. And Ray, this time, what I'm trying to help my clients avoid is getting to the place where they don't know who's in them.Ray Loewe08:46All right, so here's where I want to go. And we can come back to your processing techniques, and I can attest the fact that you do wonderful things for people who get to the state in life where they're trying to find meaning in their past and have a mess on their hands. So, what I want to do is we're coming out of this COVID thing now and I'm starting to think again about traveling. I'm starting to get my camera out and clean it it up a little bit and make sure I have all the cards and the lenses and that they all work and all of that stuff. And one of the things that I've realized in the past is that I love being out taking pictures. I don't love so much sitting at home in front of my computer and processing the bad photos that I took. And I also have had a change in thought of where I'm going. My past was to go to the jungle in Africa, or the Galapagos Islands and capture these portraits of animals that were unique and different, that I could hang on the wall. Now, in a sense, that's a story. But, what I'm more interested in now is taking a trip and saying, okay, tell me in six photos, what this trip was all about. So what I want to do to you here and I do mean do to you is because I want you to rethink and reposition yourself. If you're on the other side of the lens, and I know you have experience here, because you grew up in a family of photographers, we won't go there right now. But tell me how to rethink. I'm planning a trip. So how do I spend less time in post-processing? How do I get the photos I really want? How do I think through what the stories are going to be? So that if I went to you afterward, you'd look at me, laugh at me, and say it's done. So impart your wisdom. Go ahead. You have 14 seconds.Bonnie Shay11:10Exactly right. So, a few thoughts I want to share with you and with your listeners is that being overwhelmed with too many photos is not a comfortable position, whether they were printed or digital. So once again, I want to say quality over quantity. So we're not about shooting off 30 photos of the same thing. We want to be careful, so overwhelm is what we want to avoid. Also, I want to help you prevent the clutter before it happens. So that's why we're going through this whole process, that you won't get home at the end of the trip and have 10,000 pictures. And then I want to give you credit Ray, because when we were doing our pre-plan call on this, you said, let's call this photo organizing in reverse. Like we're planning ahead, so you don't have this mess at the end of a trip, which, to me having a plan is the best place to be in life in general. And if you can practice that plan repeatedly, you'll get even better at it. So let's talk about my thoughts about planning ahead for a trip, and how you're going to get this photo essay. So in my mind, think about who is your audience? Are you your audience? Or your spouse or your kids? Or grandkids? Who would be your audience that would enjoy this photo essay? And where am I going, you know, maybe you're just going down the street, or maybe you're going to Morocco or Africa. And you could do some research on where you're going so you can get a sense of what you might see. So you're not just surprised when you get off the plane. And you've got to stop number one, it's like, oh, I didn't know I was gonna see this kind of place, you could do some pre-planning. So another concept is to keep in mind what photos not to take. So I already mentioned the Eiffel Tower idea, right? But keep that in mind. Because if you get home with 20 pictures of the Eiffel Tower with nobody in front of them, that was a waste of your time and storage space. So think about what photos you want to be careful of not taking. General scenery is basically what you don't want to take except a few environmental pictures because you want to remember where you were or what city. So if you need to take a picture of something that reminds you where you were if you're on a 10-day cruise, that's helpful. But a specific thing that I think is also helpful if you want to keep up to date with your photos as you're taking them. So let's say you're going on a 10-day cruise. How about at the end of each day, before you go to sleep at night, you go through the photos you took that day and do some light editing. Let go of stuff that's obviously garbage or redundant, or it didn't come out the way you wanted it to. But once again, you're helping yourself get home at the end of the 10 days and not have the 10,000 photos. You've curated them along the way. And I already said this, but practice makes perfect. So by editing each day, you're getting a better flow and a better sense of what you're getting and what you want at the end of the day.Ray Loewe14:32Okay, so I've been thinking, this is trouble. So one of the things that I found is that if I'm going to a city that I've never been to, there are websites available of photographers who have taken pictures in the city, and I found some of them are pretty interesting because they can show you where to stand to get the best picture. Or where to capture the best light to highlight something. So if I want a picture of the Eiffel Tower that I'm going to consider a fine art picture, I'm going to hang it on my wall, and I want to make it mine, the perspective of it needs to change. And so otherwise I could go by the picture of the Eiffel Tower. That's what you're telling me? Right? I think I think the second thing is, you really have to think about whether or not it's something you want to hang on the wall, or whether it's something that you just want to put down in front of somebody and tell a story. Now, remember going over to people's houses that have just gotten back from a trip and you see 47 million slide photos of ugly pictures of ugly people. So again, you're saying you avoid this by just cropping every day, get rid of the especially the blurred images and the stuff that's there, get rid of it, focus on the quality? Focus on what are you going to do? Are you trying to tell the story of trying to hang something on the wall? Any other things that you can think of?Bonnie Shay16:12Yeah, so let's say you're having a family trip, and you're taking grandkids and kids and relatives and siblings. You're going on maybe a family reunion. And so you might want to do some post pictures because you want to get a whole group shot. I also want to give people the concept that when I'm going through my client's photos, the post stuff is not as interesting as the candid photos. Yes, posed, you are getting the people you know but there's not much emotion with somebody looking at the photographer straight in the eye and smiling when he says they cheese. So think about candid photos, it sort of is in line with your idea of maybe a picture of the Eiffel Tower, but do something different about it like an angle or take it when it's sunrise or sunset. It's not just the perfect Eiffel tower that everybody else has seen. But candid versus posed is a great differentiating factor and what you're going to get quality with. My other suggestion is for those of your listeners who have printed collections, and maybe they haven't worked on them, but you are planning a trip in the near future that you want to go and take your phone, your digital camera, I would say a good little homework assignment for practice is to go through your printed photos just lightly. Don't try to curate them right there. But look at them and see what kind of pictures generate emotions, especially pictures from your past, the story that you're loving to see in your photos, and that might just give you some good insights, and some good emotions that you can take towards the future of taking your own photos and making these valuable and meaningful photo essays.Ray Loewe17:58Cool. Okay, I think you helped me think through some interesting things. I mean, I'm really excited about getting back in the photography world. I haven't taken any pictures the last two years. And I think you're absolutely right, think of the pictures that have meaning. Think about how you want to pose them. Do a little homework. Think like a photo organizer in reverse. Right? All right, so Bonnie Shay, Mariposa Photo Organizing, we'll put her website up on our notes later. If you have these boxes of photos, Bonnie is a great photo detective, she can feel the paper that it was taken on and know when that picture was taken, she can find a face in that photo and then find those faces in other photos. And, Bonnie, thank you. I know I put you on the spot because this isn't what you do. But I think it will help us a lot to think about what we're taking before we get to that stage where the memories are made. So any final comments from you before we bail out here?Bonnie Shay19:10No, what I'll say is I'll also give you a link to a YouTube video that I was part of that people if they want to know more about printed photos and need a little more instruction. I'm happy to share that you can just go on and see. You know, I talked about the process in more detail, which, as we already talked about digital, but the curating a printed collection and digital collections are parallel processes. They're just different formats. But I think it could help people in general as well.Ray Loewe19:38Sure. So send me that link. We'll post it on our podcast and thank you for being with us. And Bonnie Shay, Mariposa Photo Organizing, you know that Mariposa is too long a word. I understand it's a butterfly. Okay, and you're a flighty person. But other than that, have a wonderful day, and Luke, sign us off, please.Outro  20:02Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Carol Patton's Website:  https://adventuresofmo.com/Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Welcome to the luckiest guy in the world podcast called Changing the Rules. We're sitting here today in our brand new podcast studio in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. We have a revisiting guest, we have Carol Patton, who was a freelance writer all of her life. We're going to get to her in a minute, and she's going to talk about her project that she's working on. But we're going to do something else today. We have Luke Cagno sitting at our board and we just decided that we're going to pull him into the podcast today because Carol is going to ask me a bunch of questions I don't know the answer to. And I don't want to feel stupid all alone. So welcome, Luke. And Carol Patton out in Las Vegas, how's the weather out there today?Carol Patton00:59It is beautiful. No more wind like it was yesterday. Thanks for having me.Ray Loewe01:16Okay. So first of all, let me say that Carol was a freelance writer for most of her life, and she changed, kind of as the industry changed, and she picked up a project that is immersing her in life right now. And let me remind you, if you want to know more about Carol, she was on one of our earlier episodes. If you go through our files, it happens to be Episode 84, and she was on in September of 2021. So, Carol, we're all a year older now, and maybe wiser, maybe not. So say hello to everybody.Carol Patton01:54Good morning, everyone. Or I should say good afternoon, depending where you are in the country. It is a pleasure to be here, we are going to have lots of fun today.Ray Loewe02:02Cool. So the MO project is what life is all about for you right now. And you know, you're so lucky to have a project like this because I don't think people have a project that can drive them and can be as interesting as this one has turned out to be. So give us a quick synopsis of what the MO project is all about and what you're trying to do.Carol Patton02:27Sure, many years ago, I started writing a children's story about a dog and a bird that finds a key attached to a key chain that says Florida, they don't know where Florida is. So they travel on top of a delivery truck without the driver's knowledge to every single state in the country, and they learn things about every state. And the story teaches them a little bit of geography, history, cardinal directions, but most importantly, it's fun. And how this project started was it sort of took on a life of its own, because I started discovering so many fun facts and interesting things about every state. But I could not cram them into each chapter. So I started expanding the book, which is called The Adventures of Mo. And now it's a project, it has many legs and arms and attenae. And so now I've written state blogs, more than 20 so far, with all of these interesting facts and bits of trivia that people might be interested in learning about.Ray Loewe03:33Now, before we go into the actual triviality stuff over here, this project has taken you into a whole different lifespan, because you go out now and you talk to kids in schools, right?Carol Patton03:46Yes, I've done over 16 presentations so far.Ray Loewe03:50And your goal here is to get kids interested in learning about the United States and about life. And what else?Carol Patton03:59Well, I want to get them first interested in reading and writing. Many kids, you know, second or third graders, they find it boring, they'd rather be playing a video game or outside. So what I do is I talk to them about how writing and reading can be fun. And I use The Adventures of Mo as an example, I do a guided imagery of one of the chapters, and they have a lot of fun, it's very interactive, and that sort of gives them a sense that writing is not just writing your ABCs. It's not boring, it can be a lot of fun. So that presentation seems to go well in elementary schools and for your listeners, if anybody wants to use me as a speaker, it's free. Just contact me and I'd be happy to do it over Zoom.Ray Loewe04:46We will give everybody your website so that they can find you at the end of this thing. But you know, as we've been talking over the last year, I started thinking about some of the stuff that you're doing and I used to go out and give a lot of presentations as an adult. And I just started thinking, wow, when you go into a different state, it's really helpful if you can talk about the city or the state that you're in and give some facts that you learned, it kind of breaks the ice. And all of a sudden, I found out, wow, you've got a resource here, for adults who do this kind of thing. And then the other side of that is, grandchildren come into play. When you're a grandparent, and you're trying to bond with your grandchildren, wouldn't it be great to have some fun things to talk about at the beginning of a conversation? Or even better if you're taking a road trip with your grandchildren, to be able to talk a little bit about some of the things that we're going to see and we're going to find out, and so that's the background. So let's start here because we've got tons of these things and we're going to ask me some questions that I'm not going to be able to answer. That's why Luke's here, so I don't feel so bad. So do you want to start with what adults might do with this thing?Carol Patton06:11Yeah, I picked two states. One state was really interesting trivia that may be more appealing for adults. And the second state the trivia may be more appealing for kids. But you can go on the website, and you can decide for yourself because obviously, it just depends on the age and your interest level. So okay, Luke, and Ray, tell me what state does this happen in. There's a small town that is called Earth. It's probably the only place on this planet that is named Earth. Do you know the state?ay Loewe06:46I have no idea. Luke, you got anything?Luke Cagno06:48I can't remember if we talked about this earlier or not. But I can't remember. I think it was Idaho.Ray Loewe06:57No, it's got to be a southern state because only southerners would think this way. Right? Okay, so give us the answer.Carol Patton07:03Okay, well, these three trivia are all from the same state. So let me give you the other two and then I'll give you the answer. According to state law, all thieves must give authorities a 24-hour oral or written notice of their intended crime before committing it. Apparently, this was supposed to help reduce theft. And apparently, you've got to comply with the law before you break it. That's the second stat.Ray Loewe07:30All right. Give us number three.Carol Patton07:33Number three, in 2014, there was a small town that voted to reschedule Halloween to October 30th because Halloween conflicted with the local high school Friday night football game.Luke Cagno07:51This all sounds like something Texas would do. Is it Texas?Ray Loewe07:57We know you cheated because we know you got the answer earlier but you sound good now anyway. Okay, so if I were going to Texas and I wanted to give a speech and I wanted some fun facts, how would I find these on your website?Carol Patton08:10Well, you go to the website and go to the footer or the bottom of the website on any of the pages, and there's a footer it says blog, just click on that. Right now 20 State blogs reposted, 30 are completed, we post one week. And I will complete all 50 states, I just haven't done it yet. But you can at least get a lot of rich content on about 20 states right now.Ray Loewe08:36Okay, have you got it got any other examples of things that I as an adult would want to know?Carol Patton08:42Yeah, you've got to hear this. Do you want me to tell you the state? Because the story is overwhelming.Ray Loewe08:49Yeah, so tell us the state and tell us the overwhelming story.Carol Patton08:52Okay, this happened in Idaho in 1914. There was a six-year-old girl named Mae, and she was actually mailed from her hometown to where her grandparents lived. And back then, it took many hours by car to drive there. Her parents wanted to send their daughter to visit her grandparents but the train fare was too expensive. However, they discovered that they could mail a package up to 50 pounds for just 53 cents. And guess what. Mae only weighed 45 pounds. So her parents got creative, and they purchased 53 cents in stamps, attached them to her coat and they mailed her and apparently, the post office had to honor that. She traveled the entire distance. It was from Grangeville to Lewiston in Idaho. And she traveled that distance in the trains mail car, and she was safely delivered to her grandmother's home by the mail clerk on duty. So I guess this maybe the first and last time a person was actually mailed, I don't know.Ray Loewe10:03I've got two comments on that. Where does child abuse fit in here? Although she was delivered first class, and you know, maybe it wasn't. And then the second thing is trying to figure out what the post office would do today. Do you ever track a package and find out it starts in Idaho, goes to Cleveland, and then someplace in Florida before comes back to Idaho again? Carol Patton10:26Yes, but you know, at least she was the only person in the truck at the time. She wasn't crammed in a seat like you are in airplanes. So she may have had a more comfortable ride, I don't know.Ray Loewe10:37Where do you find this stuff?Carol Patton10:41It's all out there. It's all out there on the internet. I do a lot of research. As a journalist, I'm used to doing research, so I know how to conduct it. But you just contact a variety of sites, you look under state facts, tourism, kids facts, there's a lot of websites that focus on that. And there's probably 10 sites that I traditionally go to, just to see what they have, and then see what else is out there. So this is how I find it. You know, it can be a couple hours worth of work easily. But it's fun.Ray Loewe11:13But you've got it now on your website, under a State blog, and I can find it. Okay, so let's take a different scenario here. Suppose I'm a grandparent, and I'm going on a road trip with my grandchildren. Pick a state that maybe we're going to go to and how do we get our grandchildren fascinated, motivated, and amused about where we're going?Carol Patton11:39Sure. I'm sure grandparents and parents are tired of hearing are we there yet? Right? You hear that 1000 times. And I know a lot of parents play the license plate game, how many cars have different license plates? Well, here's another game you can play in the car and your kids can actually learn a lot. For instance, I'll give you the kids state that I chose. This state has a city called Santa Claus. And every holiday it receives over half a million letters at Christmas time. You know, the city says that it responds to each letter, doesn't necessarily honor the request, but what state is the city in? A kid, I think, would be interested in hearing that. The same state also has a park called Wolf Park. If you make a donation to this park, you can get kissed by a friendly wolf. Parents may not be so enthusiastic about that, but the kids would be. And I know a lot of kids play baseball. Where was the first pro baseball game played? It was played in this state all the way back in 1871. So those are the kinds of things that the website has, the kinds of trivia, some are for adults and some are for kids. But you learn and have fun all at the same time. So do you know what state that was in? All three of those?Luke Cagno12:56It's got to be in New York, right?Carol Patton12:58Nope, 49 more to go.Ray Loewe13:02Yeah, I have no idea. So tell us because I don't have time to go online right at the moment and find the answer.Carol Patton13:10Indiana. They have Santa Claus, Indiana Wolf Park is in Indiana and again, the first pro baseball game was played in Fort Wayne, Indiana on May 4, 1871.Ray Loewe13:24Okay, let me reverse this a little bit. And one of the things in prepping for this is you did send me a list of these fun facts. And let me just read one and you can comment about how it fits into the whole thing. So you had one down here. Speaking of adventures, have you ever heard of a Bronco Charlie? So tell us about Bronco, Charlie.Carol Patton13:52It's the Pony Express. Kids learn about the Pony Express, I think in third grade, if I'm not mistaken, but they know all about it, when I go and do the presentations they know. And this is one of the presentations with guided imagery. I say close your eyes, imagine you're on horseback. There's no cell phone, there's no hotels, no TV, no road signs. And you've got to travel a full day as fast as you can to deliver this mail. And so we get into that what would it feel like? Would you be afraid? It could be raining, it could be snowing, it wouldn't matter. You could be really hot. And so they really get into this. And Bronco Charlie was the youngest Pony Express rider. So I asked them how old he was. And I'll get responses anywhere from 2 years old to 82 years old. But Bronco Charlie, I'm gonna say he's 11 and a half. He was 11 and a half because some websites said he was a 11, others say he was 12 so we'll split the difference. So he was 11 and a half. So they love learning about that stuff. And you can make it fun. It's fun for parents and fun for adults.Ray Loewe 14:59Okay, Here's another one that you put on your list. Every summer, 550 glass balls are hidden on a US island for tourists to find and keep. What's the name of that island and where is it? And if you don't know, I have the answer here that you fed me earlier.Carol Patton15:20Yes, it's Block Island in Rhode Island. And there's an artisan community there, they make these beautiful glass balls, and they hide them all over the island. And they're numbered. So when you find them, they ask you to report the one so they can check the number off and you get to keep them. So one of the stories is about dogs on a hunt to find these glass balls. So, you know, I know some people who've been to Rhode Island, they've never even heard of this. So I'm finding things that are some of them are common, some of them are not. Can I say the one about Michigan, Ray?Ray Loewe15:59Sure. Carol Patton16:01Okay. Michigan is the only one in the world that has a floating post office. It's located on the Detroit River, and it's called the J. W. Westcott. I think it's the second. And it's the only boat in the world that delivers not only mail, but packages, and also pizza to crew members stationed on ships that are traveling on the river. The boat is an official Postal Service mailboat, it even has its own zip code. It started doing this since 1952.Ray Loewe16:37So do you have to put stamps on the pizza?Carol Patton16:41You know, all I can say is I think Uber and DoorDash are in trouble. I don't know.Ray Loewe16:46All right. So we're not going to go through all of these because we want them to go to your website and look because that's where you can really get into this. But which state elected the first female or woman to Congress? And I have the answer so you don't have to look it up.Carol Patton17:07Well, I have the answer too, but that I'm going to leave that up to you to say the answer.Ray Loewe17:11All right, because Luke's not going to know this one. It's Montana.Luke Cagno17:14I was going to say Ohio. Ray Loewe17:15Well, Ohio is known for a lot of things in here. Did you have any of these that you picked up when you were cheating and looking at the list?Luke Cagno17:23No, I didn't get a chance to read them all.Ray Loewe17:25Okay, well, that's good. So that way you don't cut into my time over here. Carol Patton17:30What about Wyoming? You got that one? Ray Loewe17:35No, but go ahead.Carol Patton17:37Which state had, well we know it's Wyoming now, but which state has a dirt landing strip reserved for people from Jupiter? It's called the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. Luke Cagno17:51Has it been used? Carol Patton17:54If it has, nobody's telling us.Ray Loewe17:57You're kidding me? Carol Patton18:00I am not kidding you. I'm not kidding you. So they actually have a dirt landing strip. And I think people from Jupiter, I think they're called Jovians, I'm not sure, I could be mispronouncing that. Luke Cagno18:11I think that's right.Ray Loewe18:13Okay, so just a quick rundown of a couple others that are here. Which state invented 911? And I know the answer to that is Nebraska. Last place in the world I would have expected this to happen. And one other one from here. The state nicknamed the mother of presidents. I kind of knew this one because I grew up there. But Ohio, and it's because there are so many presidents that started their life there. So what are some of the creative things that we can do with this? We can teach kids fun things about history and about learning and about doing research.Carol Patton18:59Yes. This is a great resource for teachers, they can even play a form of Jeopardy in the classroom by using these trivia questions. They can do extra credit on exams. Teachers can be really creative with this stuff, that's just an example of some things they can do. And even sitting around the dinner table with parents and your kids. You know, if the conversation gets a little stale, you can mention any of these and it launches into a wonderful conversation.Ray Loewe19:30I can see this now. We're having pizza with our grandchildren. So which floating post office delivered this? Carol Patton19:38Exactly.Ray Loewe19:39I'll tell you I really got I got a kick out of this postage thing. I had been to Hawaii and I know you can mail a coconut from Hawaii to anywhere by putting a stamp on it, and you actually write the message on the coconut. But mailing your daughter or granddaughter I think that's a little much. All right, you got any others in here that will amuse us and enlighten us and fascinate and motivate us?Carol Patton20:04Yes. This city's name was decided by a coin toss. If I say the city, you'll know the state. So I'll give you the city in the state. It was Portland, Oregon. Okay. So it had the coin landed on the other side, what would Portland have been called?Ray Loewe20:28No idea.Carol Patton20:31Boston.Luke Cagno20:37So then what would Boston have been called? Ray Loewe20:40I guess it would have been Boston, Massachusetts versus Boston, Oregon. All right, we only have a couple minutes. And we're going to sum up because we want to let people go and look for this. So first of all, give us the website that they're gonna go to again.Carol Patton20:57It's Adventuresofmo.com. And then if you want to look at this trivia, scroll all the way down to the bottom to the footer, and you'll see blogs and just click on that. And 20 blogs are there already. Ray Loewe21:14All right. Give us a couple more of some of the more diverse things over here so we can leave people with examples. And then we'll sign off leaving people wanting.Carol Patton21:25Okay, where did the country's first train robbery occur?Ray Loewe21:31All right, Luke, this is up your alley, go ahead.Luke Cagno21:35The first train robbery in the country occurred in Indiana.Carol Patton21:41How did you know that? Were you related to the robbers or something?Ray Loewe21:46Yeah, it's right. So is that where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were or is it somebody else that pulled this off?Carol Patton21:53It's somebody else. I think they were called the Reno brothers. And when I heard that, I thought they were from Nevada, because of Reno, Nevada, but they weren't. And  they stole something like the equivalent of today, a quarter of a million dollars, something like that. So it was a lot of money. Oh, here's one for the musicians out there. The last time the liberty bell rang was more than 150 years ago. What musical notes did the bell strike when it rang?Ray Loewe22:22All right, Luke is a guitarist, I'm non-musical here. I bet you have no idea what this is. Luke Cagno22:29I read the start of it, but I didn't get to the end of it. I'm gonna guess it's probably an A.Carol Patton22:42No, E-flat. E-flat.Ray Loewe22:44Now, who decided this? Was the bell made to do this or was this just what happened?Carol Patton22:51I think it's just what happened. I have no idea who decided to make it an E-flat sound or ringing in terms of an E-flat. But let's see if I have any others. Okay, in the 1800s, dozens of shipwrecks happened between Alaska and a chain of US islands. Can you guess the name of these islands?Ray Loewe23:17Hawaii.Luke Cagno23:18What islands are there around Alaska?Ray Loewe23:21Well, I don't know there's Hawaiian Islands and there's the Marshall Islands. And I don't know what else.Carol Patton23:29Ever hear of Devil's Peace islands off of California's coast? That's where they are, between California and Alaska. Dozens of shipwrecks happen. I think they're called Farallon Islands too if I'm pronouncing it correctly.Ray Loewe23:42You know, there was one other one on here that I thought was interesting. And that had to do with there is a state that if you stand anywhere in the state, you're within 85 miles of one of the Great Lakes.Carol Patton23:57Yes. Anywhere you stand in the state. And that's my home state.Ray Loewe24:02Well, it makes sense if you look at a map, and I think this is what you're trying to do is get kids to look at a map. Because when you look at the state of Michigan, you got all the Great Lakes around. So it's got to be Michigan, right? Carol Patton24:14Exactly.Ray Loewe24:15All right. We're nearing the end over here, give us two or three quick in succession, and then we're going to leave people to do the research on their own.Carol Patton24:25Okay, I'll give you two more only and they can be good for kids or adults. Only one state capital has three words. Which state? Only one state has one syllable, which state? And let's see what else. Which state had the most men sign up to fight in the Civil War? Like I said, I have tons of these. And how many of you know the names of the four US presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore? Not everybody knows that.Ray Loewe25:01All right, let me guess at that. It's Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.Carol Patton25:06Okay, you get the prize. Ray Loewe25:09Well, I've been there. But you're right, you wouldn't really know that. Okay, so kind of let's recap, because we can go on and do these for a long time. And, and one of the reasons I knew Carol could do this is we meet for virtual cocktails every Thursday afternoon, and Carol comes up here, and we will not let her escape the afternoon without giving us a few of these. We call them factoids instead of fun facts on the air and she always amuses us with these. But again, let's just kind of recap about the purpose of The Adventures of Mo. It is to get kids engaged in reading, writing, learning, right?Carol Patton25:54Learning about the country, the amazing history, and geography of this country.Ray Loewe25:59Okay. And anything else you want to say before we sign off?Carol Patton26:04Just try a chapter. Or if you don't, go on and look at one of the blogs, because the blogs have a lot of information about history, about fun stuff. It could be anything. Ghost stories,  for instance, and I can't I'll be the one without the answer. What state has the most registered ghost towns in the country? You'd be surprised. I'm not gonna give you the answer.Ray Loewe26:30All right. We're leaving that wanting. So, Carol Patton, thanks so much for being with us again. As you do more research and you get more of these fun facts, we're going to have you back again, just because the world needs to know these things. All right. Carol Patton26:47Absolutely. Thanks. That was fun. Ray Loewe26:48Okay. So the adventures of Mo, we'll write this out in our notes so that you can find the website. And Carol, thanks so much for being with us on Changing the Rules again, and Luke, sign us off, please.Outro  27:04Thank you for listening to Changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Intro  00:04Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Bill Adams00:15Welcome, everybody. We're sitting here this afternoon, actually, it is afternoon, but you're not supposed to know that. And we're in our brand new studios here in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And we have a great engineer here, Luke Cagno, who's running our soundboard and who's going to make us sound great. And I have a really exciting, intriguing guest today. And his name is Bill Adams, and we're going to come back to him in a second. I want to remind everybody that the luckiest people in the world are people who create their own lives, design them personally, step into them and live them under their own terms. And unfortunately, we have rules that are given to us by people all throughout our lives. Our parents gave us rules. The church gives us rules. The schools give us rules, our jobs give us rules. And the problem with rules is that rules either have to be followed, or they're things that we can't do. And I think it was Steve Jobs, the president of Apple that came in and said, you know, if you're living your life under other people's rules, you're not living your life. And we have a really great guest today, who I think is pretty good at breaking the rules, or at least changing them and making them do what he wants to do, Bill Adams. And before I let Bill Adams talk, let me give you a couple of key points about his life. And Bill, you can correct me if I'm wrong on these. So, Bill Adams guided Armstrong World Industries through some of the stormiest years in its 134-year history. He's a native of Dubuque, Iowa, he joined Armstrong in 1956, as an advertising copywriter. He became chairman and president in March of 1988, just as the booming economy of the 1980s was about to stagnate, and he found himself coping with a harsh business climate that shoved Armstrong into unprofitability. He led the firm's successful defense against takeovers and brought them back to profitability before he actually retired in 1996, I believe. So, for those of you who don't know Armstrong, it was a public company, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and it was a $2 billion company with 10,000 employees. And so we have a gentleman here who managed a good-sized company and Bill Armstrong, welcome to Changing the Rules.  Thanks. Good to be here. Okay. Now, I described you originally as a hard-charging business executive, and you corrected me on that. So take a minute and tell us about your management style because I think it's important in the way you think, Well, I didn't object to, I want to modify the idea of hard-charging, there is this image, the CEOs are almost like commanders on a bridge, who are saying do this and do that. Your role really I leading an organization. First of all, I think is to have the longest planning view of anybody there. Where are we going, essentially the key choosing and trying to shape the organization to compete in the right markets against the right competition with the right offer. And then you got to think about the structure. Do you have the, you know, the financial structure, the employees structure, the ethical structure all the way through? So it's not so much hard charging is it is, I think, essentially finding out where you can make a difference. I'll say this, the decisions that are brought to you which you often share with the board are not the easy ones they've been taken care of. They're the tougher ones, the toughest one of all have to do with people. So I'd like to look at that job has being a lucky one for me. I got there because of good luck, which I won't get into now. Turns of events which worked out in my favor, but I like to look at it as being one who serves the company to get where it wants to go.Ray Loewe04:29Okay, so now let's get into what we really want to talk about. We've established your credentials over here and what you've been able to do. But you're also an expert, I'm going to use a bad word, at retirement, because you've been retired for how long now?Bill Adams04:47Little over a quarter of a century.Ray Loewe04:49Okay. So you hate the word retirement as much as I do. So what's the substitute word?Bill Adams04:56Well rewirement, I think you're rewired. Let me point out when you're in any part of the organization, you could be a plant manager, you could manage an accounts payable department, you have to use your time well, that's the thing where you're showing your stuff. In a company like Armstrong, you have all the financial resources, you want the human resources, the thing you got to do is decide how best to spend your time, where you're gonna make a difference. So you're very careful how you're using that time. And then all of a sudden, you're no longer employed. And you can put that time to any use you want to. People who study this say one of the very first things that people retired realize is: I'm on vacation, and I'm on vacation next week and next month, which means I really can choose what to do with my time. Other times it was chosen by others. So the question is, what are you going to do it and Ray, I think there's so much written about preparing for the financial side of retirement, I think maybe it would be of service to people approaching retirement if more were written about what are you going to do with the last third of your life Adult life. And do the math. Let's say you retire at age 62, you live to age 85, go do the arithmetic. And let's suppose that you become an adult at 18, rather than the arithmetic, you're going to find the 1/3 of your life in this non-employed period. Now there are some who retire from their main vocation and go into something else, small or large. But essentially, I think that's the feeling in the planning probably is, what am I going to do with this time? What am I going to pursue here? And right alongside of it, what am I going to do to help others do what they want to do?Ray Loewe06:51Okay, I should ask, I shouldn't ask you the question, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I made an observation about you a long time ago. And we've known each other for a little while, but not an extended period of time. But I think Bill is a person who really follows what fascinates and motivates him. And I think that that's one of the things that has driven him during this period of rewirement. So talk a little bit about some of the things that you've done. And how long do you continue to do them?Bill Adams07:26Well, a lot of it is just personal pursuit rather selfish. That sounds neat, I'd like to be part of that. I played golf ever since I was 12. And I played a lot of tournaments. And I've always been fascinated by the role of the golf rules official. Many people don't realize that the golf rules officials, they're not to exact penalties on people but to prevent them. to help the golfer not make mistakes, you know, and you know, you help the guy who hit a ball into the creek, determine where he places the next shot. So I went to this PGA rules school and qualified at a very difficult three-hour exam, and then went out of the course, working with other rules officials, and I could use the grand term giving back to the game. But no, I give it to me, I've been fascinated with how this works and how much there is to learn about golf rules officials. Now for how long? I did it for seven years until I didn't want to do it anymore. There was no more fire in the belly. You know, you drive into the sun towards the greater Philadelphia area seven in the morning, and you drive back into the sun coming back to Lancaster. And that's when you stop. And I don't know if that's a principle, but it's one that I think might help as people think about this. I don't think I want to start this because I don't want to do it for a long, long time. You don't have to. You're not drawing a paycheck, you know, to be in a particular job, you can simply say, I want to do this until I don't want to do it anymore. If I could use another example of, in the early period, I went down to the University of Tennessee and taught if you will I call it that in the MBA graduate school. Actually, I went down there and I found myself learning more than teaching. Never mind how I got connected with that. But what I found with that was what I really wanted to was pursue an engagement with younger people, college-age people with a faculty, it was a brand new experience for me. And then there came a time when I just ran out of steam and said thank you very much, I won't be doing this anymore. That by the way were short stints, two to three weeks at a time twice a year. But it was just a great experience. And as I said I learned so much In doing that,Ray Loewe10:01You know, let's back up a bit, your family has always been important to you. So describe your family, and then talk a little bit about the time you allocated your family during your work experience.Bill Adams10:15Well, we have four children. And they have spawned 10 grandchildren right at this point. I married Susan Cole, who I met on a blind date in 1954. And we've been married for 65 years. And when I talk about my family I've got to start there, because when I was in our international operations, I was going away for three weeks at a time. And here's Susan home with four kids and all the things that have to do with it and she ran the household, she kept the family together. As far as my own time, I tried to put in a rule, if you will, changing the rules, okay? From midnight Friday, until four o'clock Sunday, I'm doing no business. I'm not opening the briefcase, and I'm not sure I could do that in today's role or social media, here, but I could then. And it may be a matter of going back on the office phone Friday night and finishing up some things. But it enabled me to really set aside that time and do lots of things with our kids and for our kids.  Everything from going to rock concerts to going to baseball games with my son. And yeah, family was important. I have to say if St. Peter taps me at the pearly gates and says, what did you accomplish down there on earth? I want to mention the family first. Armstrong. yeah, that's in there, rewirement is in there.Ray Loewe11:42Okay, and that's still part of your life, right? You know, so what do you do with your family right now, as part of your requirement concept over here?Bill Adams11:51Stay in touch with them, it's so easy to do it now. I just looked today on WhatsApp at a posting from our granddaughter who two weeks ago went to Botswana with the Peace Corps. Now, there was a time years ago you wouldn't hear from him for two years. So we're staying in touch. We gathered 30 of them to play a lake at the Adirondacks in July. And that was 30 out of 34 of our extended family. So you know, we're working going with them. And you know, often you'll hear someone say they retired and spend time with her grandchildren. While I want to spend time with all the kids and watch them develop. You know, last week, our only son or third of the birth order turned 59. Now I thought woah, I can't have kids in their 60s. But I do and they're fascinating people. I will mention this too. I spent a lot of time in our international operations and got to go to a lot of neat places on somebody else's money. But one of the things we pursued in this requirements, Susan I did, was to go to cities and places with an entirely different view. I probably went to London, I think I counted one time, 50 times in my business career. But then Susan I would go back to London and rent a flat, or apartment or furnished villa for two weeks. And just decide every day, what do you want to do, it's raining, let's stay in, you know, sit by the coal stove and if you know, let's choose this, let's go to Stratford upon Avon and see a Shakespearean play. And that was a neat way to kind of indulge your interest and pursue what interests you. And so we've been traveling to South America, Italy, you know, all around the world, in fact, went two months ago to Iceland, which was on our bucket list. And that's part of being one of the luckiest guys in the world, to be able to have the financial flexibility to do that and to have the good health at age 88 to be able to do that.Ray Loewe14:00You know, you're still a young guy, though. Long as you think young, you're still a young guy. Bill Adams14:05Well, yes, but age has a limit.Ray Loewe14:06It does and so let's talk about that briefly, not so much from a negative standpoint, but one of the things I think we have to know is age does create problems. And I think the luckiest people in the world get around them pretty fast. So I think you've built that into your picture to a large extent. Talk to me about aging.  Well, when you when you're an octogenarian things go wrong, and they do when you're in your 60s. I never thought I'd be, you know, wearing hearing aids and they're very helpful. I've had three operations on my right eye. Thank goodness, I have cornea specialists at Hopkins that know just what to do, very lucky on that. But it hasn't slowed you down. Bill Adams14:58Yeah, of course, it's slowed me down. But it hasn't propped me down thank God in a wheelchair, you know, I may hit that sometime. But things you know you just accommodate to it. This is the first year since I was 12 years old that I have not played a full round of golf. I played some nine-hole golf. And part of that's a physical limitation and a part of it was because of an injury from a fall. And that's one thing I developed now is the ability to fall down. I'm very good at it. And you'll see when I came into the studio, I came in today with a cane, this is not a good day for my balance. Ray Loewe15:41So okay, so let's go back to these people now that are entering the best third of their life or the last third of their life or how you want to put it there. You've had an interesting viewpoint in the way you've looked at this. So what is it that you would tell people to do? I mean, forget the basics of you know, stay healthy and get financially secure. Get into the stuff that makes life rich and enlightened.Bill Adams16:13Well, I loath to give a general prescription. But I can comment on a few things from my own personal experience and some of the things I've watched. But people are so different in their outlook on life, their interests, their financial situation, their health, their family relationships. So to say now, here are the three principles for happy retirement. No. I do say from my own experience, I've learned to be a little selfish maybe. As you come out of this vacation period, hey, I'm no longer working, I'm on vacation this week, and next week, and next month. Pick out the things that really interest you and I think you should get the greatest satisfaction out of things that interest you that help other people. Or you can go in and serve and literally, I'll mention for example, Susan, I for a couple of years, helped serve breakfast five days a week to the people of food insecurity, who were coming to First Methodist Church. I really took an interest in the bright side Opportunity Center down southwest Lancaster helping raise money for that. To provide a place where kids and adults in the southwest sector of Lancaster could come for everything from after-school classes to physical fitness and things like that. I think the greatest satisfaction comes where you'll be able to help others. Well, you know, I think this is a good place to stop, though I think what I got out of this is that you have to keep an open mind, you have to follow what fascinates and motivates you, you have to do what you want to do until you don't want to do it anymore. But you always have to do something. Yeah, let me add if you could a capstone to this. And that's my faith. I really believe the universe is unfolding as it should. And I'm a basic, incurable optimist. I think that helps a lot here. And part of it is God's in charge, it may not seem like it sometimes. But I am aware of that. And I realized my weakness and the strength I can gain from my faith through all this. So when things go wrong, that's okay. You were not guaranteed about a bed of roses. And you've got some higher power to look after you and to aspire to. And I think that's awfully important.Ray Loewe18:51Well, you know, thanks so much for sharing your thinking, your wisdom, your experience with us. And we've been talking with Bill Adams, and I think we're done. I think we've reached a good spot in how to think about this world of the last third of your life or however you want to look at it and Luke, why don't you sign us off and we'll be back next week with another guest. Outro  19:18Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Intro  00:04Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:20Welcome, everybody. And thanks for joining us here at Changing the Rules. We're lucky enough this morning, we're sitting in our brand new podcast facilities in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, we have our super engineer Luke Cagno sitting here at the board. And he's the person who makes us sound good or not. So, I have to kind of behave when he's around because he can do damage to me. And we have a great guest today. But before we get into our guest, let me remind everybody that the luckiest people in the world, and that's what this podcast is all about, are people who take control of their own lives, redesign them to meet their own specs, and live them under their own terms. And the name of our show, Changing the Rules, is all about the fact that the luckiest people in the world managed to handle rules really well. You know, all our lives we're thrown new rules. Were given them by our parents when we're born. The church comes in and gives us rules. The schools give us rules, our jobs give us rules. And the next thing we know, we have rules all over the place and rules do two things. They tell us what we can't do and what we must do. And Steve Jobs, the Apple guy, the big Apple guy, came up with a statement a while ago and he said, you know, if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. So we have a young lady today who is certainly changing the rules. She certainly has a fascinating life. And the real interesting kind of summary that I'm going to start with is that she's going to tell you that her life, all of her life was preparing her for a unique opportunity that she didn't know was going to come. But when it came, she had all the pieces together based on her life so that she was able to take advantage of an opportunity. So Liz Williams, welcome to changing the rules. Say hi to everybody.Liz Williams02:21Hi, thanks for having me, Ray.Ray Loewe02:23Okay, so let's start a little bit with your background as you grew up, where and how many family members did you have? Tell us a little bit about your background.Liz Williams02:33I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, which was a wonderful place to grow up. I had three sisters, two parents, my father worked nights, my mother worked a lot, and back in those days of the 50s and 60s, mothers didn't work that much. But she did work as a secretary. So I had two working parents, adored all my sisters. I lost my older sister, April, in 2008, which was a devastating blow but I still have two younger sisters. And it was a great place to grow up.Ray Loewe03:05Okay, so you had a relatively happy life growing up. And you went away to college, right? And where'd you go to school?Liz Williams03:11I went to Shippensburg State, which is a state college here in Pennsylvania, loved Shippensburg.Ray Loewe03:16And what did you major in?Liz Williams03:18I majored in urban studies, my father had died. The September I left for college, my father died. So I had to pick a major that I thought would be very, very practical. I picked Urban Studies, which was kind of an up-and-coming thing. City planning, that kind of thing. So that's what I picked and I enjoyed it. It was part geography, part political science. And I loved it, I loved all my college.Ray Loewe03:47Okay, and then you went into the workforce, and basically give us kind of a short version of what kinds of things did you do? What skills did you use in your jobs?Liz Williams03:59The first job where I worked for my County Planning Commission, which was Delaware County, and again, in suburban Philadelphia, I did a lot of actually going to meetings, local meetings, and so forth. And I realized when I was doing that, I love to write. That was the only thing about that job that I really liked. I found after about two and a half years, I was like no, I don't think this is for me. But I did love the writing and I never forgot that. One thing that I did do there that I enjoyed was we, myself, and the librarian there at the planning commission, they actually had a library in there because they had so much materials to store. We came up with a county library plan for the county and it was one of the early library systems. Up until then, local towns just had their own little libraries. But this was a county-wide system where you get a library card at one library and it's good for all of the libraries there. So we did the foundation for that. So that was something I was proud of there. But I would say after about three years, I followed in my older sister's footsteps and I became a flight attendant.Ray Loewe05:18Okay, now we're getting into excitement. Right? Okay, so the early years basically gave you the tools that you needed to write Liz Williams05:28Yes. Ray Loewe05:29And kind of taught you what to do, right? But also didn't give you any excitement in your life?Liz Williams05:36Not much. Ray Loewe05:37All right. So now you're a flight attendant, you're a woman of the world. So who did you fly for? Where did you go? What did you do?Liz Williams05:45I flew for Piedmont Airlines, which was based in Winston Salem, North Carolina. It was a regional airline for the South. It grew to eventually fly overseas. But I only flew for seven years, I'd had enough after seven years, but it was fun. I met great friends. I did get to see some of Europe, some of South America, some of the Caribbean, in my 20s, which was kind of unusual back then. Not that many people got to travel that much at that age, so it did make me meet a woman of the world, actually. And we flew for very little because we had discounts. Sometimes you'd fly for free. Sometimes you got moved to first class for nothing. So that was great. But as I say, after about seven years that kind of got tiresome too.Ray Loewe06:37Okay, so who did you meet on your flights that were interesting stories?Liz Williams06:41Oh, I had John McEnroe, once, who was truly rude. He wouldn't put his tennis racket in the overhead bin like he was supposed to, insisted on it going in the hang-up closet for the garment bags. And you know, I wasn't going to argue with him. I just wasn't going to get into it with him, because maybe he'd report me to the management or something, you know. So I didn't do that. And I had Lynda Bird Johnson, who was pregnant at the time. With her, I think it was her third child, and I never had children. So I never understood why you'd want to have three children. And so I actually said to her, are you pregnant again? It was rather rude, but you know, it just kind of came out. And I also had General Westmoreland on there who was very quiet, he had not done so well in the Vietnam War. And I don't think he was, you know, a very popular person. So he kind of sat to himself, but we all knew he was. But mainly, you know, the bulk of our customers were Southerners. And when I went to flight attendant training, I was from Pennsylvania, so I was the only one from the north and I was the token Yankee. I had never been referred to as a Yankee before and it was a little daunting, but you know, everyone was lovely. They weren't mean to me or anything was just an odd situation to, you know, realize that, oh my, they're different. And I'm different to them. And, you know, they still kind of think like that, but as I say, they were lovely.Ray Loewe08:20Yeah. So anyway, the first part of your life, you had a fairly happy childhood, you know, moving along got a good education and a sequence of jobs that taught you writing. And then you became more of a woman of the world out there. And then something happened. So let me read this for you. You're an author, you've written a book. And this is where we're going here. And the intro to your book over here is as a young man from a gritty Pennsylvania mill town enlists in the Army Air Corps, and heads to Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific. There he and his buddies defend a O'ahu while it explodes and burns in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the worst surges, his bombers squadron ships out to primitive Pacific outposts amid air raid, stifling heat, outbreaks of tropical disease. He clings to sanity through letters that he and his wife share. Letters found years later saved in the attic. A poignant event, wasn't it? Liz Williams09:30Yes. Ray Loewe09:31All right. And here's where your life came together in something that is significant, and I know it's truly meaning to you, so tell us the  story and fill in the details. Liz Williams09:46You set me up terrifically here, Ray. After seven years of being a flight attendant, I actually well, it was probably after six years, I started working at a part-time job. Because as a flight attendant, you have a lot of time off, you probably only work three or four days a week. The other days you're off. So I started working part-time at a printing company locally there based in Arlington, Virginia. And I always excelled in English. And I knew that I had loved to write. So I thought, well, I'll do this part-time, it'll be fun. So basically, I was just finding mistakes. But that job led me to look more seriously at my career and find something in writing and editing rather than being a flight attendant. So I did. So I ended up working for well, in Washington, they were known as beltway bandits. They were trade associations or organizations that would have contracts with the federal government. And they would write proposals and so there was some proposal writing I did for a couple organizations, then I went to work for a trade association. Then I ended up working for the federal government, I worked for the General Accounting Office, which is now called the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office. And in those jobs, I basically wrote and edited reports that were read by the public, they were ordered by a congressperson to investigate or study a program that was already in existence. For example, healthcare for the military, or a welfare program, something like that, they wanted to see where taxpayers' dollars being used to the best advantage. So a lot of the people employed by both GAO and CBO, Congressional Budget Office, were auditors, or economists, or technical experts in some way. So they would collect the data to study these programs. And then the writers and editors such as myself would come along and, you know, make it a finished product, make sure it was organized well, make sure the message was right up front, make sure there weren't spelling or grammatical errors. Because those kinds of errors would undermine the report, they really had to be perfect. And I became a tremendous expert in grammar, I know everything about grammar. And I enjoyed that, it was in a way an organizational task, deciding what goes where, and how it should be presented. And I loved it. I loved my work in Washington, I really enjoyed it a lot.Ray Loewe12:42Okay, so how did this get to the letters that we found?Liz Williams12:47Okay, I did diverge a little bit.Ray Loewe12:49Well, that's okay.Liz Williams12:50Okay. Well, in the early 2000s, my mother downsized, and I helped her clean out her house, and she found a big box of letters from my father in World War II. And she said, do you want these? And I said, yeah, I do. Because by then I had become a pretty good writer. And I looked at them, I said, you know, that's going to be a book, I want to write a book and that's what it's going to be. And when I first thought of the project, I thought, well, it'll just be a straight nonfiction book, it'll just be letters. But when I started reading them, they were very substantive. My father was an excellent writer. And my mother was a good writer, too. Now, he had saved her letters that she wrote him and sent them back to her for safekeeping. So I had a very rich collection, I had both sides of the correspondence. And I started reading and I thought, you know, I think this is really a story, it's not just going to be a collection of letters. So the book turned out to be a war story, a love story, and my story of getting to know my father. Because as I mentioned earlier, he died when I was 18, I really didn't get to know him like you would get to know your parent as a young person. And in the course of my research, I discovered that my father was most likely a gay or bisexual man. So I don't share this with most of my readers because it's rather the climax of my book. And I refer to it as a secret most of the times I talk about my book when I give a talk about my book. But for your audience, Ray, I'm gonna go ahead and just say what it is because there are no WWII stories out there that I know of, that have a gay theme. And I have one. And I don't know for a fact the trail was too cold to really track down men who had known my dad as a young man to really confirm this. But the fact is, I asked my mother about it. I asked my older sister about it, who, as I mentioned, passed away. And she's the one that really tipped me off about it. She said, you know, I interviewed her for the book because she knew him better than my other sisters or myself because as I say, he died young. She said, you know, I think looking back, I think Daddy was gay. And as soon as she said that, I was having an epiphany. I literally looked outside through her window at the leaves on the trees and they became well defined. That was the nature of the epiphany because so many things made sense when she said that. How he was so fixated on the fact that I shouldn't be allowed to wear bangs, so fixated on our hair, what we wore. You know, he had four daughters. There's one other book that I know of on the market. It's called Fun Home, that a young lady wrote who she had a father who was gay. Now, she didn't know it as a child that her father was gay. But she became aware of it because actually, he kind of preyed on young boys, which my father didn't do anything like that. So she came from a lot of dysfunction. But her book became a Broadway play and won a bunch of Tony Awards. But it doesn't have anything to do with World War II. This does, there were, according to my research, at least 40,000 men in the military in World War II who were gay, there were probably more. They did conduct tests and screenings to eliminate those kinds of men, so they wouldn't get in the service. But obviously, they didn't succeed in eliminating all of them. And a lot of them served like my father with a lot of dignity and honor and sacrificed a lot for our country. I think that should be recognized.Ray Loewe17:10So here you are, all of your background kind of culminated in this opportunity. And when it occurred, you knew what to do. And the book that you wrote is No Ordinary Soldier: My Father's Two Wars. Right? Liz Williams17:28That's right. Ray Loewe17:29You won an award for your book.Liz Williams17:32I did. In 2018, I submitted it to, I think, three contests. And one of them I placed as a finalist, there was one all-time winner, let's say top winner, and then there were two finalists in the genre, which was military history that I entered. And the award was the 2018 International Book Awards Contest, which is a contest that Publishers Weekly does recommend that authors enter. So it is a reputable contest. And I was just thrilled by the award.Ray Loewe18:02So let's kind of think about this. Well, first of all, you have a book out there, and everybody should buy this book, right? Just because you wrote it, and it's available on Amazon. Liz Williams18:15It has five stars. Ray Loewe18:16And what we'll do is we'll put a listing on our podcast notes when we're done so that people can find this. But I think the thing that's really interesting about you is how your background enabled you to be prepared to do something. And, you know, from knowing you, I think you consider yourself one of the luckiest people in the world because you've taken this career that was diverse pieces. And you're a writer. Liz Williams18:45I am a writer. Ray Loewe18:46And that's what you are going to be from now on. So, cool. So do you have any closing comments before we sum up?Liz Williams18:55I just want to thank you very much for having me, Ray, it's been a pleasure.Ray Loewe18:58Well, we've been talking with Liz Williams. Liz is a person who has written a book, an award-winning book, and it's available on Amazon through Kindle anytime you want to read it. And it's a war story. And it's not fiction. It's true, but it's how do you describe it? Liz Williams19:21It's a creative nonfiction book. It's actually a hybrid. It's a combination history memoir, and what they call creative nonfiction. In other words, it's a true story, but I use creative techniques such as metaphors, similes. It's a good read. It's not boring.Ray Loewe19:38And you're gonna make it into a TV series at some point, right?Liz Williams19:41Ken Burns, if you're listening, I'm available.Ray Loewe19:44Okay, so thanks, Liz for being with us. You're certainly one of the luckiest people in the world and you found your way to doing what you really want to do. And thanks for being here. And Luke sign us off, please. Outro  20:01Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:19Good morning everybody, and welcome to our brand new studios in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And we have our super engineer today, Steve Wright. And I like it when Steve is on the board, because he's a fellow swimmer, and he somehow boosts my energy level when he does this stuff. So we're gonna get a super performance, and his job is to make us sound good at the end. And I want to remind everybody that the purpose of our broadcast is we talk to one of the luckiest people in the world each week. And the luckiest people in the world are those people who take control of their lives and take control of the direction and live their lives under their own terms. And we call the show Changing the Rules. And you know, throughout our lives, we're given all of these rules by everybody else. Our parents give us rules, the school gives us rules, the government gives us rules. You know, everybody is out there telling us what we're supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do. And I think it was Steve Jobs, the Apple guy, who came in and said, you know, when you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life, you're living somebody else's. So we have a gentleman today who certainly is one of the luckiest people in the world. And you're going to find out that the luckiest people in the world are also the most interesting people in the world. And Ying Wushanley, and what a great name. And you're gonna get the history of his name, too, as part of the process over here. And I met Ying in a swimming pool. He's a fellow competitive swimmer, he's a very, very good master swimmer. And we met him not too long ago when we were trying to qualify for next year's Senior Games. And I found out that Ying is recently retired as a full professor from Millersville College and he is embarking in the next third of his life. And he's going to be doing some exciting things, but he's done some really exciting things in the past. Ying has been an expert on the history of sports and his journey is an incredible one. Ying, welcome to Changing the Rules. Let's start with your expertise, is that alright with you?Ying Wushanley02:46Sure, yeah. Well, thanks for having me on the program. My expertise, I'm a trained sport historian. Most people have never heard of a historian who is focused on sports, but there are many out there.Ray Loewe03:08Well, let me start with a couple of specific questions. You know, one of the things that we deal with all the time in sports are the Olympics. Okay. And we had a conversation earlier and we were talking, I was under the impression that the Olympics have changed. That we went from being an amateur sport group over here to very much today professionals taking over the sports and I found out that's not true, is it?Ying Wushanley03:37Not in ancient time, the ancient games were the athletes were what we term as true professionals because they do their best and they will make a good living based on their athletic prowess.Ray Loewe03:57So the ancient Olympians were paid in fact?Ying Wushanley04:00Yes, paid big time. Yeah, like tons of olive oil, or free meals and they could dine everywhere. That's, that's pay. Well, they may not have gotten the currency also, but the name recognition will enable them to live a very wealthy life.Ray Loewe04:23And that has gone on for almost forever, right? When we started the modern Olympics, when did the modern Olympics start?Ying Wushanley04:31The game, the first game actually took place in 1896. But in 1894 the International Olympic Committee was formed. At the time, there was an idea of amateurs because it was supposedly based on the ancient idea of amateurs, even though in reality there wasn't such a thing. But it was based on a bunch of social elite who wanted to create this upper-class idea of amateurs. Meaning you don't play for money, you play for the love of sports.Ray Loewe05:11But the only way they could do that is because they were part of the wealthy elite, and they had the money to be able to train and do whatever. Ying Wushanley05:16Yeah, who can afford to be a very good amateur athlete if you don't have money?Ray Loewe05:20Okay, so now we can understand where we've gone all of these years. And today, it's very much not the amateur that rules the Olympics. Ying Wushanley05:30No, because the amateurs won't be good enough to compete there.Ray Loewe05:34Okay. So, while we're on the subject of the Olympics, I often wondered, why would any city in their right mind want to sponsor the Olympics? I mean, do they make money doing these things?Ying Wushanley05:47Well, it's for recognition. Politicians would like to bring attention to their corner of the world, especially say if you're from Brazil, from Australia, and how do you bring people to your corner of the world? So using Olympic Games as a major attraction, of course, certain cities have benefited financially, but many cities don't. And that is why today because the bidding is so expensive, many cities decided to quit because after all if you have more than 5 or 10 cities bid, only one will be chosen. And the preparation will cost so much money. And eventually, you're still not chosen and you've wasted a lot of money. Even the chosen ones, not too many of them make a big profit. But on the other hand, it's hard to measure because the legacy will be there, you had  the honor to host the Olympic Games. Ray Loewe06:57So national pride comes into play. Okay, so that gets me into the next question. And again, I had the ability to talk to you about some of these. So I sound smarter, knowing the right questions than I actually am. But, let's talk about national anthems and sports and give us a little insight into the importance of national anthems. You know, we've all gone through this change and what's going on where athletes now rebel against national anthems? But there's a history here and a tradition. So, why do we play national anthems? What goes on, what's the importance of all of these things? Ying Wushanley07:42Well, it started as an accidental event, I think, during the 1918 World Series of baseball, and after the seventh inning stretch that the band, they played some music, including the Star Spangled Banner, which got spectators excited. And the manager or whoever the organizer was figured out for the rest of the series, we're going to start playing that music to get the fans involved. And that was the beginning of that tradition. And traditions, sometimes they're welcome, sometimes not, including many of the baseball franchise owners, they decided, you know, we're here to play sports. Why do we have to play music? You know, it makes sense at the championship to play it, make it more formal and more,  respectful. But for every game to play this does not seem right. Well, you know, the baseball history as well as American sports history always goes along with the time. And oftentimes we have nations in war and patriotism plays very important role when you are in the war. And somehow we always need patriotism, patriotism would be something that the national anthem will symbolize and epitomize our national unity. So, that became a tradition first in baseball, then in other sports. But for many, many decades, it wasn't that big a deal until, I think more recently, the Persian Gulf War, the Desert Storm operation in 1991, then of course, the 911. 911 after 2001. With artists like Whitney Houston doing a rendition of the national anthem, it became so popular at the time, it was ranked in the top 20, and the second time in the top 10 of the most popular charts. So, it's very common then from an outsider's point of view, it seemed to be very strange because we can understand playing the national anthem at the Olympic Games, when you play against Italy, against France, against Japan. So, both team's national anthems will be played. But here in this country, every sporting event, even at high school level, or even, you know, little league baseball, there's always the national anthem. And oftentimes the media likes to portray it as every time we play sports, we honor the people who protect our freedom because we have the privilege to enjoy the freedom we can play sports. Some of my students say that other countries don't have this freedom, which is quite naive. Ray Loewe11:04Yeah. Wow. I mean, you know, you don't think about these things. And I guess this is the advantage of being able to study sports and of being a sports historian. I'm gonna want to talk quite a bit about this Title 9, because I know that you spend a lot of time writing about that. But before we do that, let's backtrack and let's talk a little bit about your journey here, which I think is an extraordinary one. So you grew up not in the United States, you grew up where?Ying Wushanley11:35In China, in the People's Republic of China, the mainland China. There's another China called the Republic of China, but the Chinese government, Mainland China does not recognize it. That's why there was a big fuss about Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan recently, because communists believe it's part of mainland China, even though in reality it isn't.Ray Loewe12:04So you grew up being raised by two women, is that correct?Ying Wushanley12:10That's right, mainly because my father was a high military officer, officially. And in the nationalists coming down, you know, you heard of Chiang Kai-shek, who was the head of the nationalists before 1949, when the Chinese Communist took over China, the mainland, so the nationalists fled to Taiwan, which is where they still are until today.Ray Loewe12:42Okay, and so your father basically was put in jail because he was on the wrong side?Ying Wushanley12:48Yeah, more than 32 years altogether from 1950 to 1985.Ray Loewe12:56Wow. Okay. And you were raised by two women, and what was the effect that they had on your life? I mean, here you are, you're very much into sports, you're very much into things that you would think Dad would do, right?Ying Wushanley13:10Yeah, that's right. Even though my dad was quite athletic, but my mother was much better athlete. I would say she is all an around athlete and in almost every sport, she could get her hands on. But she even flew glider in late 30s and early 40s, so at the time that Amelia Earhart was flying around the world.Ray Loewe13:36Okay, so you grew up, you went to college in Shanghai?Ying Wushanley13:42Yes, that was after the Cultural Revolution ended, from 1966 to 1976 under Mao Zedong. And there was no college in China for 10 years officially. Not the normal university. The university was running but the students were not academically selected. But Deng Xiaoping in 1977 revived higher education. So I, at the time I was working out of a state-run farm in the outskirts of Shanghai. So I had the opportunity to take the entrance exam and became the first  member of a first class of university students. I was playing soccer before I went to the farm, but because of my family's political background, I could not continue.Ray Loewe14:36Okay. So you when you got your degree, or what did you major in Shanghai?Ying Wushanley14:42I majored in physical education at the Shanghai Normal University and then after graduation, I started teaching as a physical education instructor at the Shanghai Foreign Language School. It's quite a prestigious school in Shanghai, in China today, it still is. And after six and a half years teaching there I came to the United States.Ray Loewe15:09All right, so what motivated you? You know, how did you get here? Ying Wushanley15:13Mostly I was trying to escape the political persecution directly or indirectly because of my family's background. And my brother, my older brother, was at the time the leader of the pro-democracy movement in China.Ray Loewe15:30Okay, well, we'll catch up with your brother in a minute. Okay, so you came here, and you went to the West Coast of the United States?Ying Wushanley15:38Right, I was admitted by three institutions. Washington State University, Chapel Hill in North Carolina, and Purdue. But the Washington State admission came first and I grabbed it right away. I didn't care which school I was going to, I'm leaving China. That was most important for me.Ray Loewe16:01Okay. And you were here, now your mother, your aunt, the rest of your family is still back in China at this point in time?Ying Wushanley16:08Yeah. That's right.Ray Loewe16:09All right. So here you are, you're on the West Coast and you picked a major, and what did you choose to major in to get your Master's degree?Ying Wushanley16:16Masters in physical education, the focus on sport administration at the time it was called.Ray Loewe16:22Okay. And you were saying you had a friend there that caused you to then move to Pennsylvania?Ying Wushanley16:28Pennsylvania, Penn State, I was admitted as a graduate doctorate candidate.Ray Loewe16:36And you came here and you're still in education, still in physical education to a large extent, but you're also majoring in sports history.Ying Wushanley16:46Yeah, the department is Exercise and Sport Sciences. But my focus was history of sport and physical education. Ray Loewe16:57Okay. So now you are a doctor. Dr. Wu at the time. Were you married at the time?Ying Wushanley17:05No. We were married in 93 when I was still at Penn State,Ray Loewe17:12Okay. Now, to show everybody what a renaissance man you are here and what an equal rights person you are here, let's talk about your name and talk about your bride and talk about what happened here.Ying Wushanley17:25My wife's name was Geraldine Shanley, my name was Ying Wu Woo when we met and before we got married, though when we got married as well. But we became naturalized and became American citizens in 1999 and my wife in 2000. And when we did the official paperwork and we had the right to choose, to decide our name, so we chose on these names. Actually, our first daughter was born with the name we decided so we created a new name, Wushanley. Shanley is Irish and from the county Leitrim, and Wu is a more common Chinese name.Ray Loewe18:16Okay, so how many Wuhanley's are there now? Ying Wushanley18:20Four.Ray Loewe18:20There are four of you in the whole world.Ying Wushanley18:22That's right. Yeah, my wife and me and our two daughters. Yeah.Ray Loewe18:27Okay. Well, this will explain to a large extent why you spent so much time talking about women's sports and Title Nine and, and getting into all of that stuff because we have with us a true Renaissance man here, ladies. I mean, you're gonna want to know this guy. But talk to us a little bit about Title Nine, what it did for women and what it didn't do for women.Ying Wushanley18:51Okay. Well, Title Nine we should know, this year is the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title Nine of the Education Amendments of their act in 1972. So it's the 50th anniversary now. What Title Nine intended was to eliminate all kinds of the sex and discriminations in education activities where the institution received federal financial aid. So for example, Millersville University, not Millersville College anymore, receives any form of financial aid from the federal government, that law applies to Millersville. Basically, most universities and colleges in the country need to be in compliance. The intent of the Title was to change history in terms of opportunities previously and think about in your time even more that not too many women got the opportunity to go to law schools, to engineering schools, to medical schools. But nowadays, if you look at, it's almost half half, and that's the biggest intension. Now, most people think on Title Nine as related to athletics, so I will deal with athletics. Probably it wasn't even in the mind of the people who proposed that law, but it became manifested in athletics, because discrimination in terms of ability, you know, athletic sports is most reflective in terms of how one is discriminated. Well, we have separate men's and women's sports teams or competitions for good reason. Because physically or physiologically, there's a significant difference, you cannot compete together. If you put them together, then not too many women will make the men's team, at least as of now, because the ability. And that's why Title Nine affected college athletics the most. What did it do? It did a great thing to women's athletics because for example, the University of Maryland before Title Nine, the budget for athletics was like 99% went to men's and 1% went to women's if that much. Today, the budget probably is still not equal, but much closer. The program for example, at Millersville, we have probably 21 or 22 teams, and 12 - 13 - 14 are women's teams, for the reason of having equal or close to proportionally the ratio that represents the student body because Millersville is probably 53% women. So the good thing it did is it increased the opportunity for women to compete in college sports. What it did in terms of what perceived as damage to women's control of intercollegiate athletics is because before title nine women had total control of their entire women's college sports. It was separate from the men's, men's under the NCAA, women's under another organization called the AIAW Association for Women's Intercollegiate Athletics.  And now, after Title Nine, the NCAA started to offer opportunities to both men and women because most institutions didn't want to have within Millersville, for example, have a separate department athletic department for men, for women have different rules. And the different rules is the problem. You can be sued for not treating your students equally. So after Title Nine, most universities will merge the departments, men's and women's, into one. And you can guess easily if those merge, who would be the athletic director most likely. Because men used to have this and just our society is still a male-dominated society, even today. But then women did not have control anymore, because, before Title Nine, they had total control, they don't have to deal with men, they will not allow men to come into coach or to be the director. Now, Title Nine says you cannot discriminate anyone. And the people often think, you cannot discriminate anyone, you cannot discriminate against a woman, you cannot discriminate against the man either.Ray Loewe23:56But it's changed the way sports laid out because today you see the big colleges, universities dominating women's sports. I remember days back when we had a little school right outside of Philadelphia over here that just absolutely dominated women's basketball.Ying Wushanley24:14Yeah, Arcadia University. Yeah, they won the first two national championships on the AIAW.Ray Loewe24:22So, you get some good things and you lose some good things.Ying Wushanley24:25Well, it depends on how you see it. The AIAW wants to have combined organization, have 50-50 share of the power. The NCAA being it's so dominant in terms of its tradition, power, and its financial resources, they wouldn't want to share. I know it's not right but it's also kind of logical and you can understand a big company merges with a small company and all of a sudden these two companies have to share exactly the resources, probably it won't happen.Ray Loewe25:02All right, unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our conversation here. And I want to get back to one more important thing in your life. I think what you've been able to show us to a large extent is, here you are, you're in China, a place that you want to get out to. You came to the United States, we can almost say you escaped, right? And, you built a life for yourself that's exciting, along things that were enjoyable to you and interesting. And if Ying can do this, the rest of us can do this, too. We just need to know where we want to go and what we want to do. But there's another element here that I want to make sure everybody knows about, and that's your brother. So, your brother stayed behind in China when you left? And what was he involved in and what happened to him?Ying Wushanley25:56Well, he was involved in the pro-democracy movement in China, started in the late 70s. And he became a leader once he got involved. So he's devoted to human rights and democracy in China. Of course, it wasn't easy. But he was detained, put into prison labor for four years from 1980 to 84. And I came to the States in 1988. At Washington State and Penn State, and then I started teaching at Ithaca College. And, you know, my mother died in 89 unfortunately. And my father was living with a relative after he was released for various circumstances. So my brother was the only one, the only person I really know, and I was concerned about his well-being. So I said, you can continue your pro-democracy movement. But I feel much more comfortable if you can come to a country where you have more freedom to do it. And so I don't have to have nightmares every night. So he agreed to come. So in the summer of 1994, just about when I was going to start at Ithaca College, he decided to come. I enrolled him in the English program for second language, foreign language at Penn State, then he hopped onto the plane, but did not arrive in JFK where the local media, or the Chinese media, was waiting for him because they knew he was coming. So he disappeared. And for 11 days, we didn't know his whereabouts. He did not hop onto the Korean airline where he was supposed to board. 11 days later, the Chinese authorities admitted they had him just for interrogation, didn't want to let him go, just because there are some unsorted issues. I started campaigning in the State College with my advisors, families, and friends, and it became an international campaign to rescue him. Eventually, the President of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton, and every senator was involved. Hundreds of representatives involved in terms of demanding, writing letters. Media like the BBC. Reuters News, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, I remember all those media interviewed us reported. I made it big just because I know what happened in China for political prisoners, they can disappear and you never find out where they went. I wanted the world to know so that he wouldn't disappear. And that seemed to have worked and I was told indirectly that I should not continue this campaign because it wasn't good for the image of China. I said, all I want is for you to release him and I will stop my campaign. And 50 days later, they sent him onto a United Flight and told him never to go back to China again. And he hasn't.Ray Loewe29:27And he lives now, he's on the west coast in the United States? Ying Wushanley29:31Oakland. Yeah. Ray Loewe29:32And a happy ending.Ying Wushanley29:34Yeah, he's okay. He still lives happily there. Well, he lived in Ithica for a while, but after the first winter, he figured that's not what he liked. Because he had meetings in San Francisco, he liked the weather they had. So he likes comfort as well.Ray Loewe29:49Well, you know, thank you for being with us. You know, we're over our time limit so we're going to have to end this but again, Ying Wushanley, a Renaissance man, one of the few people you'll ever meet that combines names with his wife. And thanks for sharing the history of sport with us, and I can see why you get excited about it. And we'll continue to see you in the swimming pool. And just, you know, thanks again for being here. You're obviously one of the luckiest people in the world. And thanks again. Steve, sign us off, please.Outro  30:32Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:19Hello, everybody, and welcome to Changing the Rules. We're sitting here in our nice, new podcast studio in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And we have our engineer Luke Cagno over here, who's going to make sure that the sound quality comes out. And I'll give you his number later, if you're not happy with that. And we have a guest today and this guest is going to be a little different. He certainly is one of the luckiest people in the world. And let me remind everybody that the luckiest people in the world are those people who design their own lives and live them under their own terms. But we also call this program Changing the Rules. And one of the things we found is that the luckiest people in the world handle rules well. You know, we have all of these rules that we've been given, they start out when we're born, parents give us rules, then the church gives us rules and the schools give us rules and our jobs give us rules. Before we know it, we have all these rules and rules, do two things. Don't do this, or you better do this or else, right? And I think it was Steve Jobs, the president of Apple who came in and said, you know, if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. And we have a guy here who I think most of us would say, changed the rules. So, George Mowrer, George is a certified retirement Coach, did I do that right, George? And he's got his own firm, it's based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he's been helping people trying to figure out how to run the last third of their lives. You know, basically, life after work is over and how to get the most out of it. And, George, before we get into the actual thing we're going to talk about here, talk about what happens in the last third of your life, how many days do you get to do whatever it is you want?George Mowrer02:17I mean, it depends on how your health is or whatever. But I love to look at it, maybe in terms of weeks, but if you have 30 years, that's 1500 weeks of your life to do what you know, whatever you want to do. So it's a good idea to have a plan for it. Ray Loewe02:34Okay, so you did something that I find absolutely fascinating. It's not necessarily for me, but maybe I'm reconsidering it. You hiked the Camino Santiago. Okay, first of all, what the heck is the Camino Santiago?George Mowrer02:53Yeah, so it's a very quick, 32nd history, James was one of Jesus's apostles, after Jesus died and was resurrected and did all that, James, his mission field was that Spain, that Iberian Peninsula, that's where he went, Spain where Spain and Portugal is today, he did his thing, he made a big difference there. He went back to Jerusalem, where he was killed. And his remains were then, in honor of him, were shipped, literally shipped, to where Santiago is, and they're buried in the crypt of the church in Santiago. And so for 1000s of years, or about 1000 years, people have been doing a pilgrimage in James's honor. Everyone is moving towards Santiago to honor him. And so that's the very quick history.Ray Loewe03:48Okay, so, although it started on a solely religious basis, it's not necessarily totally religious today, although I'm sure some people do look at it as a religious thing. But you went and you joined a group of people, a throng of people. I don't know how you wanted to characterize it. And you hiked this. So first of all, tell us a little bit about where you went and how long was this?George Mowrer04:13Yeah, so I did what's called the Camino Frances, which is the traditional, the most popular of the caminos. There's multiple caminos in Spain, they all end up in Santiago. But I did the one that most people know about and it starts in actually a Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, which is at the very bottom of France, right as the Pyrenees Mountains start and, so it's about 530 miles to Santiago across northern Spain.Ray Loewe04:45And this took you how many days to do? George Mowrer04:48So I did it, I hiked for 38 days. I took four rest days in there in some of the bigger cities, Pamplona, Burgos, Leone and then Santiago some rest days. I actually continued on the hike to what's called Finisterra, which is, in the olden days was known as the end of the world, which is where the ocean is. It's just an additional three days of hiking on the back end of it. You know, what the heck while I'm there?Ray Loewe05:14Okay, so how many miles a day are we talking about? George Mowrer05:17Yeah, so I think on average, I was between 12 and 15 miles a day.Ray Loewe05:22Okay, so you get up in the morning, and what was the typical day? What did you do?George Mowrer05:28Yeah, typical day, probably alarm would go off around 630, I just gotta get up. Simply put my sneakers on, stick my backpack on and start walking. We'd probably go about five kilometers, then stop somewhere in one of the cafes for breakfast. There's the cafe, like, every five to eight kilometers, I'd stopped for breakfast, and then I'd walk another 10 kilometers or so, stop for lunch, maybe have a beer, you know, because you can do that. And the beer and the wine is pretty cheap there. And then maybe another four or five kilometers to where I was arriving, which was usually about two o'clock in the afternoon. I'd find my accommodations for the night, maybe take a shower or maybe a brief nap, I'd walk out to the cafe that was right outside the door and reconnect with other pilgrims that were on their way along the way and hang out there. 6:30, maybe eat dinner, and 9:30 or so go to sleep, and hopefully sleep well and start the whole thing over the next day.Ray Loewe06:29Now when you did this, did you do this on your own? Did you do this with a group? What? George Mowrer06:39Yeah, so I mean, I very purposely wanted to do it by myself. I didn't want anyone to go with me, I wanted to experience the Camino as a solo hiker. Of course, what happens on the Camino, to everybody, is the relationship piece happens. And, you know, so as much as I started by myself, I probably had interactions, significant interactions, with 50 or so people, and of those 50 people, there are about 25 that became pretty close friends that I still connect with. And then of those 25, 10 probably about 10 people that I feel like I've known my whole life, and that I will continue some kind of relationship with moving forward - have and will continue moving forward. It just blew me away the relationship piece.Ray Loewe07:31Now were these people English speaking? What, you know what, what goes on there?George Mowrer07:39Yeah. So, I mean that the language of the Camino with quotes is English. Although the locals, I was very surprised that English is not spoken by many of the people along the way. You know, one would think you're in the hospitality business and the cafes and the hotels and stuff. But that really isn't the case. But along the way, English was, generally, the language spoken. The people I hung out with were from Australia, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany. The German speak English really, really well so I was greatly rewarded by that. And obviously, people from the US and Canada were there as well.Ray Loewe08:24Okay, so you can do this in a number of ways. But, generally speaking, you had a starting point and a stopping point every day. So you did have a plan to get through there. And you knew about how long you were going to walk and you kind of knew when lunch and dinner was going to be. You just didn't know who you are going to see or meet along the way?George Mowrer08:42Yeah, well, I mean, and there were definitely periods of time where I was hiking with a group of people. And then there were times when like, I'm sort of an ambivert. I'm partly introvert, partly extrovert. I like time with people but I also valued and loved walking by myself a bunch too. So I tried to make sure that that discipline was all the way through my process. Ray Loewe09:08Alright, so how much did you organize this to begin with? Like, did you go with a tour company? Did you show up at a spot and start walking? What do you do?George Mowrer09:18I think for the most part, I read, I had a guidebook that I had read or looked at ahead of time. I follow tons of Facebook groups. I did this May in June of this year, of 2022. And there's a Facebook group of people doing the Camino Frances, May, June 2022, with about 1,000 people that are part of that group. So, lots of insight, lots of things I learned just following that Facebook group. I love the memoirs. I probably read four or five of those that kind of gave me some good ideas of things to do, but I was not part of a tour group. I had my backpack and my sneakers and my walking sticks and just started walking. And I knew that you follow a sign, you follow an arrow the whole way.Ray Loewe10:04Follow the yellow brick road.George Mowrer10:06Yeah, or the yellow arrow or whatever.Ray Loewe10:08Interesting. Now, when you go on this thing, you can go low budget or you can go high budget, can't you? So what's the difference? What happens? What did you do? And then what do other people do?George Mowrer10:23Yeah, I mean, the accommodations can be anywhere from six or eight euros a night, which is kind of a dormitory kind of a setting. There's public ones, there's private ones, where you're going to pay, you know, 12 or 14 Euro per night. I spent a lot of nights in those, but there's pensions, there's guesthouse, there's hotels, you know, all the way up. I think I ended up just from a financial standpoint, I ended up, believe it or not, including food about 83 bucks a day is what I averaged spending over the time. So you can do it for less and obviously, you can do it and spend more. I did not use a tour company but people do do that. I just, you know.Ray Loewe11:13So, if you want to do this and not have the same experience, you can have somebody pick you up at the airport, they book the hotels for you, they tell you where you're going to stay, they tell you what the restaurants are. And they send somebody along in a van and make sure that you don't fall on your face and get hurt, right?George Mowrer11:29You can probably arrange for something like that. Correct.Ray Loewe11:32And that was not you. You did it more on the lower budget kind of a thing, interspersing some luxury along the way?George Mowrer11:41Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure lower budget, I didn't do that. I mean, there are people that spend a whole lot less. I mean, I wanted to make sure I had the full experience of that. I did not have my places arranged ahead of time. I usually, a day or two, looked at okay, I want to go there tomorrow, I want to go there the next day, and then I might make reservations for those. But you know, it also depended on the people around me. You know, we did spend a lot of time together. And so, where are you guys going, you know, that kind of a thing.Ray Loewe12:16Okay, so why did you do this?George Mowrer12:22Well, I'll tell you, I mean, there's a movie called The Way. And of your listeners, Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez star in the movie. And it is about this journey that I did. And I saw that movie and I'm like, that's it. That's it. I want to do that. And then my church, back in 2017 did a mission trip, where we hiked as a group of about 12 people. We hiked for a week, and then we served in one of these albuquerques, or these dormitory kinds of places. We served for a week and just in that week, I'm like I want to do this. As soon as I can do this, and I can make my budget work, that's when. And literally, this year was the first year that it could happen. And my wife gave me her blessing. And I said goodbye.Ray Loewe13:15Okay, so how do you prepare physically for this, if you want to do this? What do you have to do? Do you need to be in shape?George Mowrer13:23You do. I mean, you're walking each day. What I'll say is I chose to go at this kind of this 12 to 15 mile but for people that might not be as in shape or want to do it, but they don't think they can do that. So okay, so you do five miles a day, six miles a day. It doesn't matter, you know, it's going to take you longer, or you don't go as far but your level of being in shape shouldn't dictate whether you go or not.Ray Loewe13:57Okay, so I'm sure you met some wonderful people and you've got some great stories, so enlighten us a little bit here.George Mowrer14:06Yeah, so a good story. One of the Albuquerque's. One of the things I wanted to do in my own head was, I play guitar, and I thought wouldn't it be cool to be among strangers or whatever and play guitar sometime. And one of the people I was hiking with knew that I played guitar as well. I'm a little bit shy like I don't want to just pull out a guitar and start singing. So there were about eight or ten of us around the table. A couple Germans that spoke English but a lot of French people that did not. And we finished up dinner and one of the people next to me said there's there's a guitar in the other room. I'm gonna go get that guitar and bring it back and we're gonna sing. And I'm like, fine, okay, whatever. So she went and got the guitar, brought it back. I pulled up an app on my phone with lyrics and chords and we started to sing songs that everybody around the table knew. It would be like Cat Stevens Wild World. And we did some Beatles songs and everybody knew the songs. And here we were, we couldn't speak the same language. But yet, we were all singing together. And the coolest part of it was at the end of it, we did about five songs, I'm like, I'm gonna end on a high, I'm not going to keep this thing going all night. Then one of the French guys reaches across as if he wants to guitar and we hand him the guitar, and this guy starts playing now. He wasn't playing a chord, like ripping chords, let's sing songs. He's more of a delicate, and he's playing like Pachelbel Canon and you know, things like that.  And we're like, oh my gosh, the language of music, has brought us all together. And that the coolest thing about that is after it was over, one of my German friends came up to me and he said, George, this has been my favorite night on the Camino. And that is what it's all about, where relationships come together like that. Ray Loewe16:13All right, when you walked along here, how many people did you see that were in groups? How many were singles? Who are the kind of people? You know, one of the reasons specifically is were there single women that you met along the way that do this? And was it safe?George Mowrer16:32Well, it was certainly the question of solo hikers. I mean, many start out as solo hikers but very quickly, come together. There's a phrase on the Camino, your Camino family, where people come together and they just form relationships and as a family, or as a group, they spend time together. But at the same time, there's people that want to be by themselves the whole time, male, female, it is a very safe kind of setting or whatever. But I ended up interestingly too, which my wife doesn't love, is I ended up with four other single women that I spent a lot of my time with. And these are four amazing women, I posted some pictures on my Instagram. So, people that were interested, they could follow along and see that. And my wife, I talked to her one day, and she said, so those are your peeps. I said yep, they are, they're pretty amazing, pretty amazing people as well. And I still stay connected with them to this day, which was lovely.Ray Loewe17:34Okay. Any other stories you want to get in before we move on here?George Mowrer17:39Move on, you know, if something comes up, I'll share.Ray Loewe17:41Okay, so again, you did this. I think you told me when we were rehearsing for this a little bit, you did this because you wanted to experience the kind of life that you're telling other people in your coaching job to do. Okay. So would you like to elaborate? George Mowrer18:00Yeah, I mean, I think the most effective thing I can do as a coach is live my life exactly what I'm trying to encourage them to do. I'm recently retired from my 35 years in the insurance business, vocational career. And this is a direction that I'm moving. I'm in about three years into this retirement coaching. And people are watching me. How can I tell people to do stuff that I'm not doing myself? And, you know, the Camino is just one example. They think I'm crazy that I'm doing this. Ray Loewe18:32Yeah, I think you are a little bit too, but it's intriguing. George Mowrer18:34Yeah. I'm breaking the rules, you know, that's what it's about.Ray Loewe18:37So, would your family go along on this excursion? Would you do this again?George Mowrer 18:44Well, I mean, good question. I do plan on doing it. I mentioned earlier there's multiple caminos and from what I understand, on the Camino Portuguese, there's a particularly beautiful part of it that goes from Porto up to Santiago and is supposed to be incredible. And I would love to do that again next year. I'm not sure my wife this is her thing to do. And she's given me her blessing for me to go do it. But I will say that I talked to my son who lives in Berlin, Germany, and if he can make it work with his job and stuff, now it we it may not be next year but there may be a future year that we actually do this together. So I'd love that. But I'd love to do it again by myself. I don't really care.Ray Loewe19:29I'm getting the idea this is not something you would do with a tour group because the tour group is fixed and what you really want to do is you want to explore the new relationships and you want to meet people from other cultures and things like that. Do people just walk this? Do you see bicycles? Anybody riding by horseback?George Mowrer19:52Good question. Bicycles. There are a lot of people that do this on bike, maybe there's a little bit less. They can do it quicker. But yeah, bikes are very popular, a little bit annoying. But there are paths, bike areas around some of the mountains, and things that we go over. I saw a few horses. I actually saw a guy with a donkey. He had walked his donkey to Santiago and he was walking back. And I don't remember where he started, but it wasn't Spain and it wasn't France. He may have started as far back maybe as Italy or somewhere like that to hike in. So, only a little bit of that, almost everybody was walking though.Ray Loewe20:39Okay, so you're gonna meet new people. What about the relationship with the locals though? And stuff like that? Is this something they're for?George Mowrer20:48Yeah, I mean, the locals, not only do they love the pilgrims, which we are called, but it's become a pretty significant part of their economy. I think when I think about Northern Spain, it's wine and farming and then pilgrims. We are in the top three economic drivers for that place. And I think, pre-COVID 2019, I think there are about 350,000 pilgrims that did the Camino in one way or the other that ended up in Santiago.Ray Loewe21:20Okay, so we're near the end of our time. What do you want to tell people to do? You know, obviously, you're going to do this again, you enjoy this, you got a lot out of the experience. Any final remarks you want to make?George Mowrer21:36I mean, for me, it was the most unique thing I ever did in my life. For me, for the first time in my life, literally, I had nothing on my calendar and no responsibility to anybody. So, it gave me a glimpse of what life could be outside of my normal life, and experience something new and amazing. And, you know, obviously I'd say yeah, hike the Camino, you should do the Camino, anyone can do the Camino. Or you know, people in wheelchairs have done portions of the Camino, it is possible to do with, you know, with proper planning. But it is an incredible, unique thing. So I encourage anybody to do it if they're interested in doing it.Ray Loewe22:20I think it's a phenomenal experience. And it's one I never heard of until recently. And now all of a sudden you talk to one person about this and you find there are other people hiding in the woodwork that have done this or are wanting to do this. So you know, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, and let me think about this a little bit and maybe we'll have you back and we'll continue and go into the next Camino and see how that works out. So join us again next week. We're going to be back with our engineer Luke again and Luke why don't you sign us off.Outro  22:58Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too! Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Geoff Boyer00:19Hello, everybody, and welcome to our podcasting studio here in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And I'm sitting here with my engineer Luke Cagno. And I've got two magnificent gush, they are two of the luckiest people in the world. And before I let them talk, let me define what the luckiest people in the world are all about so that you can focus in on why they are who they are. So, the luckiest people in the world are people who figure out what they want their lives to be like, they actually design them to their own terms, and then they step in and live them under their own terms. And people who do that tend to be happier, they tend to have a sense of direction. It's not an easy thing to do. But one of the things that you're going to find from today is it takes some planning to do that. And we're going to focus a little bit on visions and planning. So today, I have my two guests, Jeff Boyer. Jeff is a longtime friend, which means he's almost as old as I am. And Jeff has been in the financial advising business for a long time. And he's also been in the banking business, he started a couple of community banks, and he's still active there. And although he has sold his financial planning business, he's still active as an advisor in an advisory role there. So he's a perfect person to talk to us about where the money's gonna come from to do what we want. Our second guest is George Mauer. Okay. And George is a certified retirement coach at Nextgen Retirement Coaching, and he focuses on the non-financial areas of life. Okay, so I'm going to start out and pose a problem with a story. And then you guys are going to come in and tell us how we solve this problem. So welcome to changing the rules. So years ago, I'm a competitive swimmer, I still am, and I went down to our National Senior Games Championships, they happened to be in Birmingham, Alabama, and I did my swimming thing. And I'm wandering around afterward, talking to people, and I meet this guy, and he's carrying six medals around with him, five of them gold and one silver. The silver one is the important thing. And I later found out that John won his six medals in the 100- 104 age group. And at age 103, John's medals were in the shotput, the discus, the hammer throw, the javelin, and he launched one crummy event to 101 year old. So there's more than one in the age group, okay. And this caused me a great deal of concern because I started thinking, well, what if I'm lucky enough to live to be 100 years old? And more and more people are starting to do that today? Well, if that happens, what do I want my life to look like? Am I going to be like John here out having fun with his friends? Or am I going to be sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home because I don't take care of myself. And the next thing is, if you retire at age 65, which is still kind of a normal way of thinking about things, and you live to be 100, that's 35 years. And what are you going to do with your life? I think it's easy to waste it. I think it's easy not to have enough money to do what you want to do. So now we got to get to the plan. So, Jeff, I'm going to put you on hold for a minute. Let's start with George over here. George, talk to us about the meaning of life and what do we do?George Mowrer04:09Oh, wow. Well, thank you for that wonderful introduction. I would say, I mean, the thing that I get pumped and excited about is that, as you said, we could have as much as a third of our life ahead of us in our retirement years. So, a third if you even think 30 years, that's 1500 weeks to do whatever we want to do. And you know, I think, you know, my friend Jeff here, we were talking before, he had a wedding this past weekend, there was so much planning that went into one day of that wedding, and I'm thinking people do not do that kind of planning for their retirement as much as that went into that one day. So, you know, again, the planning is, as you kind of alluded to, is the key.Geoff Boyer04:59Well, let me post something here. Because when I got out of business school, we were all told to do 25 and 30-year plans. Well, people don't do that anymore. You know, and the biggest complaint I get about planning is people say I had a plan. And then we had COVID. And my plan was out the window. So why did I bother planning in the first place? And yet, if you don't plan, you're going to waste time, you're going to waste your life, you're not going to have the resources to do what you want. So how do we cope with that?George Mowrer05:31I mean, I'm not sure a 30-year plan, I think more than a plan is to have a vision for what that next chapter of your life is going to be. I love the idea of sort of 10 years at a time, you know because we have our health and our health is going to change over the years. That's one of the considerations. So I don't have a 30-year plan, but I have a plan. And I live my life that way. And I do feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world.Geoff Boyer05:59Okay, so let's bring Jeff in here for a minute. So, Jeff, we have George here, and he's got a 10-year plan. How do we structure the money to deal with that plan? And let me pose something here. I know, I had a bucket list when I retired, and I went through that bucket list pretty fast. And every time I checked something off the bucket list, three new things came on. And where does the money come from? Because if you're retired and on a fixed income, how do you cope with those things? And if you live in an ever-expanding life, what do you do? So talk to us, tell us the secrets of life? Well, thank you, Ray, I think you put a keyword there, and the word was bucket. But I would say rather than bucket list, I would say buckets of money. If you take if you want to plan and you have to plan or you're not going to get where you want to go. A bucket that has cash in it, a bucket of short-term investments, a bucket of long-term investments, with greater risk can help you get through any COVID situation where the markets go down and people are concerned. If you're dealing from cash, you're not playing with your investments, you're not taking money from a declining bucket. But rather that bucket is going through the valley and back up the mountain. You know, in the future, at least that's what history tells us has been done and does consistently. Okay, I want to come back to you with another thing. But let's go back to Georgia and throw another thing into the woodwork here. That's the wrong word. But whatever it is, I mean. So, George, we're thinking that maybe we'll live 30 years. What if we don't? We don't know, we have no idea how long we're gonna live., right? Okay, so how do you plan? How do you plan for the long term and the short term here and the contingencies both ways?George Mowrer08:09I mean, from my thinking, the most important thing to do is figure out what is most important for you right now. And it's not necessarily a financial thing. It's what do you value? What do you value most? And in kind of building around those, what is most important for you, and from there plan. And the plan may be financially driven, it may not be, it might be serving. There's things that you value, that for you to live the best life that you can you're living into those things.Geoff Boyer08:40Okay, when you coach somebody or talk to somebody, how do you determine or how do you get them to understand what their values really are? Because I suspect a lot of people don't think consciously about this. George Mowrer08:52Yeah, good question. I think when I'm working with somebody, I want them to figure out what they value and what they want to value or what they long to value as they move forward. And I take them through a three-question exercise. And light bulbs go on when I do this. The first question I'll ask them is what do you want your ideal retirement to look like? What's a typical day? What's a typical week? What's the perfect retirement looks like? And then they can name like I would you know, golfing and traveling and visiting friends and blah, blah, blah. The second question I ask is okay, you go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you you have five years to live? Now, what does your perfect retirement look like? And that usually takes people back but now they have five years to deal with. So then they can relook at that. Often their vision for their retirement at that point is not quite as crazy as the unlimited one but it still is fairly consistent with that. And then the third question, and this is one gets them, is you go to the doctor and the doctor says, oops, I made a mistake, you have 48 hours to live. And so it's no longer a matter of what you're going to do with that last 48 hours. Now it's a time of reflecting on what are your regrets. What do you wish you did? What are the things you'd love to do one more time, and all of a sudden out of that conversation, values, and what really is important begin to emerge from that? And then those values become the foundation, whether you have five years, 10 years, or 30 years ahead of you.Geoff Boyer10:34Okay, getting back to Jeff here. Because somewhere around here, whatever our life is going to be, we have to know that we have enough money to be able to do it. Okay. And one of the things I think that we have to do also is allow for contingency. So what if we only have 48 hours left to live? And what if we have this pile of money left over? You know, what's the plan for handling that too? But the question I really want you to ask is, how many financial advisors get into this kind of conversation about truly, what is it that you want your money for? What do you want to be able to do with it? And how do you do that? I think more today than in the past, financial planners are looking at some of these issues as to what's the point of the money. And, you know, in our practice, you know,my meetings are usually two hours long. One hour for finances and one hour for what are you doing with the rest of your life, and then trying to integrate the two of them. To an extent, it depends on how much money you have and what your aspirations are. If you have lots of money, it makes it easier, obviously. But if you have lesser money, you've also got to throw in how much of it do I want to leave children or charities? Or whatever? Or do I want to spend it all? And it comes down to building a plan, it comes down to saying this is where I am, this is where I want to go. What are the strategies that we're going to use to get me there? Okay, let's stay with Jeff here for a minute. And let's bring values in the equation. One of the things that George brought up as he started talking a little bit about what are your values and especially if you start thinking about a long life, and then a lesser long life, and then maybe a very short life, I think your values come into play. So how many people really understand their values, from your perspective? I think most people would say that they do. But I'm not sure they really do. Because, as you said, values change as times change. We used to always think that people would grow their assets, and then spend their assets down on a given line. But in reality, we've learned that people spend more, let's say in their 60s to 70s, their go-go years, to their 70s, the 80s when they spend less in their slow-go years, to the last part where they spend more because of health issues in their no-go years. So go-go, slow-go and no-go. Okay, I think I might be able to focus in on that a little bit. All right. So we got some interesting ways of thinking about things. And let me toss out another idea that's come up occasionally. And this idea of practice retirement before you retire. So how do you know what you want to do? You know, here's one of the problems, most of us face something that we call Cliff retirement, I guess that's a good word for it. You know, here you are, you work like a dog, you're slaving for other people or maybe slaving for yourself or your clients or whatever it is, and you hit this magic year or whatever it is. And you leap off the retirement cliff, and you have nothing to do. How do you how do we deal with that? How do we plan for it? So which one are we gonna start, raise your hand here. I had a client who was in that situation. And when I met him, I asked him what his goal was for retirement. He said, I'm going to sit down on the porch and put my feet up, I'm going to watch the neighbors go to work and mow the lawn and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just going to enjoy myself. And I said, okay. I said, when will I be meeting your wife? Because if you do, that statistics tell us that within seven years, she's going to be our client. And it's a hard thing to say but it's very true. You have to have an idea of what's important to you. What do you want to do? I met a guy the other day who seeds envelopes for charity. He puts five bucks and leaves it on a park bench to see who will pick it up, read the note on it and add to it or take it. This is something he's wanted to do; he's very wealthy. But he does it because he wants to help others and help teach them to add a little bit to the pile and eventually give it away. The whole idea is, that's his purpose. Okay, go ahead.George Mowrer15:29I mean, what I would add to it is, I think if suddenly someone finds themselves retired, it happens very quickly, I think initially, people love it. There's this perception of retirement as being a perpetual vacation, they're like, finally I have no routine in my life, and I can go golf, and I can travel and do all that. But that goes, six months, maybe a year, and then all of a sudden, reality starts setting in where all of a sudden, like routine, they longed for routine, and the routine is gone. Routine, identity, relationships, purpose, those things start, purpose less and less starts showing up. And then that's when the reality starts hitting that, oh, I need to do something about this.Geoff Boyer16:15What about the trap of getting into retirement, getting busy, and then finding out all these things that you're busy with don't have the meaning that you want them to have? When do you find out that's true? And how do you fix it? And how many people do this and whatever? George Mowrer16:41I mean, that's where planning comes into play. I love working with people even before retirement or that initial period after retirement has started because without the plan, you will start going down a path where you're just wasting a bunch of time. Eventually, you may start volunteering and doing things that give you purpose and meaning. But I'd much rather not waste that time and help people move right into it.Geoff Boyer17:07Okay. All right. Words of wisdom. So here we are, when do we start trying to get this plan together in a practical sense? So, Jeff, you're with your financial planning clients over here, when do you get them to start saying, you gotta meet George, or you got to meet somebody like George because you got to start thinking globally about what you really want to do. And then how do you know? How do you know what you really want to do? I think that if you take it to the financial side when you start working, is when you start looking at what am I trying to build? And how am I going to build it? And how much am I going to put aside for me 50 years from now, because time is your greatest ally, by far. The retirement side, I think for most of our clients, happened in their early 50s. Some of whom said I want to be retired by 55, some of whom said I'm going to work till 65-75, whatever. But in each case, it was okay, how do we partition? How do we define? How do we do a lot of what George is doing? You know, I think probably more after the fact, when the person has retired. Cliff, if you will, to use that word, retirement is an awfully dangerous thing. It doesn't work for most people. I mean, when I decided to sell my practice, it wasn't to stop working. It was to transition and focus on a bunch of things that I had not had time to do before. If a person can define those things that are important to them, and then start building that schedule if you will, that calendar that says what am I doing the first week of retirement? What am I doing a year from now? In that same week, so to speak, it's going to be very different.Ray Loewe19:07Okay, so transition planning is what you're talking about here. Let's get rid of this word retirement. I really don't like it. And you know, the pure definition if you look it up in the dictionary, retirement means to take out of use. And I hope I don't get taken out of use.Geoff Boyer19:27Could I use another word? It's called retirement. It's taking a look at where you are, what you've learned over your career, transitioning it into another direction, and refiring what works for you and what works for others. You know, let's get back to George's questions because I really think this is the key and I think if we could get somebody to seriously ask these three questions. What were they again, give them to us and give the thoughts behind it. George Mowrer19:58Yeah, so I mean, the first one is what's the perfect retirement look like for you? Then the second one's if you only have five years to live now, what does the perfect retirement look like for you? And then third one is, you only have 48 hours. You're not going to live any retirement, what do you regret? What are your regrets? What do you wished you did one more time? And that's where the values start emerging out. And a plan can then start. So for me, Ray, the values, that's the foundation of the plan. That's the beginning. From there, then it's like, so when you're not at work, what's important for you? That's the values, that's what that answers. When you're not at work, who are you? That's an identity kind of a thing. So who do you want to be in this next chapter of your life? I don't like the word retirement either. That's why I use next chapter. You know, and if you want to do those things, what kind of health do you need, because we may live to be 95 but we may not be very active. You know, our go-go years could be short. Health is a big deal, relationships are a big deal. And the financial obviously is a big deal.Geoff Boyer21:11Okay, so let me try and sum up what I think I learned from both of you. So what I got out of Jeff, you're gonna laugh at this? Go-go, slow-go, and no, go.  Yep. Ray Loewe21:21All right. I think they're critical concepts. And if people understood them, then they would understand some elements of what we're going to face in the future. Do you want to add to that at all, or any comments on that?Geoff Boyer21:36I think you know, obviously, if you're a very active person, you're going to have a longer go-go period, unless you have a health issue. But I'm reminded of my 100-year-old grandmother who told me that at three o'clock every afternoon, she and two of her friends in their late 90s used to go down to the health care facility to visit the old people. Point being at 100 years of age, she still didn't consider herself old. Well, it is a frame of mind, isn't it?  It is absolutely. Ray Loewe22:11And it's a frame of mind that's easier if you're financially prepared and if you have a plan of what you want your life to look like, I think that's what we're saying here. And George, what do you want to sum up with? I mean, you know, we've got these three time periods to ask questions for. And I think if more people did that, they'd have a better idea of what's really important to them. So what other comments do you have to make?George Mowrer22:38I mean, to me, it's about you have 1500 weeks ahead of you in your life in these retirement years, and how best to those. At 168 hours a day, how best to use those living in a way where you are getting life out of that. And I get really pumped about that time to do whatever we want to do. I get pretty, pretty excited as you can tell.Geoff Boyer23:06Okay, so I think this is a good place to kind of end this podcast, and I'd like to leave two caveats. I think we all need two kinds of people in our life, maybe you can find them in one person, but probably not. I think you need a George to help you explore what's really important to you without thinking about the money. But then I think the second thing that you really have to do is once you have that plan in place, once you have that vision in place of what you want, and how it might change, then you need to put the money piece in because a lot of what you're going to want to do is going to require money. And you have to take into account if things change, how is that money piece going to change? And that's where your financial advisor like Jeff Boyer comes into play. All right. Let's sum up and hopefully, we haven't solved any problems for people, but we've raised a lot of questions. All right. So join us next week when we'll have another exciting guest and who knows what problem we'll take on at that point. And Luke, would you sign us off?Outro  24:19Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

For more information:  https://foundation.willowvalleycommunities.org/Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world,Ray Loewe  00:19Good morning, everybody. And you're gonna see why I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because I have two incredible guests here. But before I introduce them, and they think they're the luckiest people in the world too, I'm going to have to kind of subvert them a little bit today. But let me comment on what we mean when we talk about the luckiest people in the world. The luckiest people in the world are those people that we all want to be. They're the people who take the time to redesign their own lives under their own terms. And then they step in and live them under their own terms. And we titled our show, Changing the Rules because the luckiest people in the world handle rules really well. You know all through our lives were saddled with rules. Our parents gave us rules, the church gave us rules, our schools gave us rules. Then we go to work, our jobs give us rules. And I think it was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who came up and said, you know, if you're living your life under other people's rules, you're not living your own life. So, the luckiest people have figured out what to do about rules, we all need them. But the secret is to live on your own terms. So, we have a subject today, it's a little bit different than what we usually do. You're gonna see that the people we're talking to are two of the luckiest people in the world. But we're going to talk about a topic that bothers us because it's something that gets in our way of being lucky. And we have to figure out how to deal with it. And the topic is memory care. And I have two wonderful people here. I have Jeff Kenderdine, Jeff is the Executive Director for the Foundation at Willow Valley Communities Charitable Foundation. And we have Lauren Renehan, Lauren is part of the Charitable Foundation also. But we really want to get into her background, because she has a lot of experience with this whole concept of memory care. And let me start by posing something, and I'm going to direct this at Jeff to start with. This whole issue of people having memory issues is growing exponentially. So, what do we do about it, you know, give us some idea of what we're facing.Jeff Kenderdine  02:45Sure. It's one of those things, that's a little bit of a double-edged sword, because advances with heart disease, advances in cancer treatments, etc, enables people to live longer and increase that health span, just the quality of life during that time being alive. Unfortunately, that results in more and more people being diagnosed with dementia. So in essence, if you live long enough, you're going to be impacted by dementia in some way, shape, or form, either personally with yourself, a loved one, a spouse, a family member, a friend, a neighbor, and it will impact every single person's life in some way, shape, or form.Ray Loewe  03:28You know, and you were telling me earlier, there's another aspect to that, and that has to do with caregivers. You know, we're having trouble getting people to take on certain jobs these days. And so the environment that you're in as a caregiver may not be the best environment as a caregiver to be in, is it?Jeff Kenderdine  03:46No actually, and Lauren can touch on this specifically from her prior career before coming into the Foundation, but my life has been impacted by dementia as well. So, my father had dementia, he since passed. But that was my first exposure to dementia. And like most, I knew nothing about this disease. And as a caregiver coming in, you're faced with the reality of, you know, a weaning cognition and being able to interact with your father as your father, that changes. And also the ripple effect on the entire family and even financially. And actually, that's the reason why I'm here at Willow Valley Communities is because of what we intend to achieve and make that difference.  Ray Loewe  04:32All right. So Lauren, speak up. You have hands-on experience here. So you were in the memory care awards, were you not?Lauren Renehan  04:43Yes, I was. But you know, my career and my adventure through dementia started way earlier. So, I was lucky enough to know my great grandparents, my grandparents, and they lived to be well into their late 80s and even 100. But to Jeff's point, they all experienced dementia. So my first encounters were about 20-plus years ago. And it, you know, it guided my career path. My father was always working in the funeral industry, so I was raised there. I have a natural propensity toward older adults and the geriatric population and just end of life in general. So, I went to school to earn my Bachelor's and Master's in Social Work, because I thought that would give me the most opportunity to help the most people and really be that change agent that I wanted to be. And that led me through hospice and adult day service and eventually to Willow Valley, where I was the social worker in personal care, specifically Cedarbrook, our memory support community, for six years or so. And, I think my experience there is really what shaped my desire to change the rules around Memory Care. My dad had a stroke about 12 years ago now. And that occurred back when I was in high school, so all the while that's been on my mind. And we're starting to see my dad's memory and he's starting to see changes in that. And you know, what really hits home is when you are in those hallways, and in the traditional memory care model, there are the metal doors that are locked all the time, you enter a code to get in or out of the building. And I vividly recall moving this one resident in and her daughter was just in tears. She called me, we had the room all set up with her personal belongings, the nurse and I were ready; the daughter had taken her to lunch and brought her back to the front of our memory care building. And she calls me and she's just hysterical. She says I can't get mom out of the car. Because her mom knew exactly what was going on, you know, she was aware enough to know that she was moving, but so cognitively declined enough to not realize that she had some, you know, limitations that needed some supervision and assistance to get through her daily routine. So the nurse and I went out, and it probably took us two and a half hours that day to get her from the car into our garage and a little bit settled. So we went home with a number of bruises that day, trying to fit her into this mold that we've created of, you know, medical model, not so person-centered care. And I think, you know, couple that and similar experiences telling families, they have to move their loved one to our memory care, secure environment, with the experience of my dad and knowing that this is not what I want for him as he progresses. That's where, you know, we took the opportunity, Jeff and I working together, to really shape or reshape the way that the conversation occurs around memory care and what we're doing here at Willow Valley.  Ray Loewe  07:42Yeah, now you use when we were talking about this before we got on the air here. You mentioned a word that really disturbed me. And yet it's probably so true, you know, the current model, we're basically warehousing our mentally handicapped people. And I don't want to be warehoused, you're not doing that. I'm gonna be with that lady, I'm sitting in the car, you're not getting me out. And it's gonna take a lot longer than two and a half hours. So how do we deal with that? Because we have to have a place where people are safe. And I think, you know, as a son or daughter of a parent who needs help, you know, the first thing we're concerned about is making sure that person is cared for and making sure that they're safe. But that's not enough, is it?Lauren Renehan  08:32It's not enough. If we want to be, you know, person-centered, focused on the individuals, we really do need to change the standard for that. We did as you say, we used to warehouse people. You know you develop dementia, you move into these sort of alms houses, and people don't visit. It's a stigmatized place. And we have those repercussions of what we did before to people still existing through how this medical model is shaping people's perception of what we do today.Ray Loewe  09:04Okay, now, one of the things I'm excited about is I live in a wonderful place. It's called Willow Valley Communities. Okay. And Jeff and Lauren are part of a Foundation here. And we have a three-part program to build something better in the memory care area. And Jeff, why don't you take a minute and talk about the three parts of this and why it's so important to have the three parts and have everybody involved, not just the caregivers.Jeff Kenderdine  09:34Sure. I think one of the things that we touched on here is really, you know, everybody wants to be treated with respect and dignity. And, oftentimes in the more traditional clinical settings, that's removed, and simple things of freedom of choice. And we have a phrase that we like to use, it's called room to roam. So in this arena that we're talking about on our memory care campus is seven acres, which is secure, it's safe. And it provides the ability for the residents there to freely move about, from their small household out into an outdoor courtyard and so forth. But the key difference is that they get to choose that. And, again, Lauren had mentioned about this being what we'll call the habilitation model, rather than a rehabilitation model. This is less about treating the disease, per se, and more about treating quality of life. So that is really where we're focused on the environment as therapy. And that has been evidence-based to really have a positive impact on individuals living with dementia on their quality of life. So the three components you reference, Ray, were the residential or are the residential component, the support component, which is all around supporting the caregiver, and we'll touch on that. And then the third is really about some of the advances that, because of the partnerships that we're going to have here, through research, through education and training, because of that ripple effect, in particular, with the broader community and the caregivers out there.Ray Loewe  11:23You know, let me interrupt for a second because I want to make it clear that some of this is available now. Some of the state of memory care is awful today. So, where you go to put parents or yourself or whoever it is that needs the care is all over the place. But the model that you're building where you are is absolutely incredibly new. So, let me shut Jeff off and go to Lauren over here. And tell us a little bit about some of the things that are being built into the model. I mean, first of all, what's this place gonna look like versus what places look like now? And then we'll come back and talk about technology.Lauren Renehan  12:08Sure. So, historically, what we have done is long hallways, hospital-type setting, and in some personal care homes, assisted living nursing homes, what you'll find is still two to four people to a room. And what we've learned through our research and planning for this project is that that's not going to be an option moving forward. People who are operating from a place of late adolescence, early adulthood, didn't have roommates, you know, they were getting married, they were living with spouses or partners for 40-50 years, and it wasn't natural to have a roommate. So, in this new memory care center, what you're going to see are all private rooms, private bathrooms. An upcharge is not existing for those, you know, how can we charge someone more simply because they have a certain diagnosis that really necessitates them having a room to themselves, where they can have their personal belongings, bring things from their past, you know, to decorate the walls and the rooms. And, as Jeff said, this room-to-roam concept, what we have found is, these long hallways are not conducive to memory support. So people who are not any longer oriented to you know, person, place, time, location, any of that, look down a long hallway, they see a door, and they try to what we call exit, seek or elope from that environment because they don't understand why they're there. And we're going to remove that feeling of distress by creating hallways that you know, have natural curvature, they're continuous. So when you walk down the hallway, it's not a door at the end, it's maybe a room that you could possibly go into. And then you turn the corner and there's another room. So what we've done with our existing locations, as you mentioned, is you know, we are changing the script now. So, in Cedarbrook, we do have sort of like a figure eight or a clover, if you will, of hallways that branch off into different halls for rooms or for dining or for outdoor exploration. So, that's what you'll see at the Memory Care Center. And it will be 14 households of 10 people each. And Jeff's really great at describing that greenhouse model that we will employ over there.Ray Loewe  14:20We can let Jeff talk, it's okay. All right. So Jeff, tell us about this.  Jeff Kenderdine  14:28Again, back to the concept is trying to create as normal of life as possible and to make those connections to their lives prior to dementia. So, one of the things that we're deploying here is a small household model. So, like Lauren said, there are 14 households, 10 residents each. Private bedroom, private bathroom and things like you and I have in our homes: living room, dining room, screened-in porch, a patio, even a den. So those things are the types of things that you would experience in your quote-unquote, normal life every day. So, part of that small household concept is just to make those connections back to their lives before dementia and that cognitive impairment set in. The other aspect is, we have a commons building, which we often refer to as the town center. And again, that's designed to create that normalcy that connection to their lives prior to dementia. And it has aspects like in a village center, a town center with a grocery store. You know, you think about a grocery store, and absolutely, everybody in their lives has been to a grocery store at some point. So that's normal, they can go there, get some apples, bring them back to their home, which has a kitchen, and bake an apple pie. So, it's engaging all of those senses, the smells, the tastes, and just being part of making the pie. And as people learn their preferences, and so forth, again, the quality of life improves for that family, that family of 10. And, you know, if I'm trying to give you coffee, and you're not a coffee drinker, but you can't tell me that, that comes out in frustration. So the more we know and learn each other's preferences, the better  quality of life for everyone.Ray Loewe  16:29Okay, so we're gonna get this setting that's very normal. And, my understanding is I can go outside too right, and when I go outside in a controlled environment, where I'm safe, but I can be outside, I don't have to be inside. So that gets rid of a lot of the frustration that people have, right?  Jeff Kenderdine  16:51That's right.  Ray Loewe  16:51And I would guess that it gets rid of a lot of the apprehensiveness of people coming to visit their loved ones who are in an environment because now it's a fun, to the extent that it can be, environment. Right?  Lauren Renehan  17:06Right.  Ray Loewe  17:07All right, Lauren, we'll get back to Jeff again, because he wants to talk, but I'm not gonna let him. So let's talk a little bit about the technology pieces here. Because, again, you were saying that, you know, a caregiver might have to interrupt somebody several times a day and take blood pressure to make sure they're healthy and things like that. Well, you've got some tricks up your sleeve now to get around that too. Right?  Lauren Renehan  17:30We do. Technology is always advancing and this campus, which what's going to make it so incredible is how expensive it is, it's going to be seven acres. And you know, 140 residents, if you do that math, how do you keep tabs on where everybody is, at all times and what they're doing. And the fact of the matter is, we won't. We'll have technology do that for us. So picture like a Fitbit or an Apple watch something to that extent, and that is doing a lot of the monitoring for us. As you mentioned, it's really not quality of life to stop someone and take their blood pressure to get parameters before we administer their blood pressure medication. That's not something that was done in their early life, perhaps. And it's not something that we want to continue to do now for fear that it may trigger something negative for this person and certainly diminish their dignity. So, technology would monitor you know, where they are, are they sitting or standing? How long have they been outside, given the temperature of their of their environment? When's maybe the last time they took a drink if their hand was up above, above their shoulder per se? What is their blood pressure, what's their heart rate, what's their body temperature. And all of this sort of biometric data is captured, it could be automatically documented, giving the nurses more time to do person-centered care and therapy versus, you know, the documentation that they spend 80% of their time doing. And that, again, frees up the staff. So expansive campus, that's one thing that we're going to do to improve care. But we're also incorporating technology in some other ways. As Jeff said, the environment is really designed to be therapy in and of itself. So, the lighting that we're taking into consideration, it will have a lot of natural lighting, so that people's circadian rhythm you know, acclimates to what it should be, trying to eliminate some of those sundowning features you may have heard of, with some people living with dementia. So that comes across in the roofing structure, but even so much is lighting in their bedrooms. You know, they have pressure-sensitive flooring now or pressure-sensitive socks that you put on people so when they get out of bed at night, it turns on a tiny nightlight, they don't have to remember to turn on the nightlight which we know will not happen with dementia. But you know, everybody gets up in the middle the night to use the restroom and these sort of technological advances will take care of that for us. You know mitigating the risk of falls, helping them to navigate and maintain independence so it's not you know, pressing a button for the nurse to come help you. They're still able to function independently and do those tasks by themselves. Things such as music, you know, maybe there are buttons on the wall for the mood that that person is experiencing. So maybe when they're happy, they, the nurse or their family member coming to visit can press a button on the wall, and it plays a list of their favorite songs that bring them joy, or it presses a button for reminiscence, and it brings them back to maybe their wedding song. And all of these things would be captured at the time that they move into independent living. So you know, it has their input from when they're higher functioning cognitively, it has their family input, friends, and it's something that they can, you know, update and change along the way to match their preferences so that by the time they get to the Memory Care Center, and they're operating at a different place, from a cognitive standpoint, we're able to fill in the gaps where they no longer can. Keep bringing them joy and therapy through the environment.Ray Loewe  20:58So how much of that is now and how much of that is the future?Jeff Kenderdine  21:05It's actually, it's a little bit of both. Because of what we've learned in the research side of things, in order to really come up with this overall plan, we were able to incorporate some of those advancements into the expansion and renovations of our current Memory Care Center called Cedarbrook. And probably the best example of that, beyond eliminating the straight long hallways, it's now has curvature so you can walk and walk and walk is our garden room or greenhouse. And in there, the residents in our Memory Center are able to tend to the plants and certainly, it's all edible, just in case. But it gives them purpose and gives them meaning.Ray Loewe  21:50Yeah, so the Fitbit that Lauren was talking about how current is that? Or is that something that we're not gonna see for 10 years?Lauren Renehan  21:58If we wanted to see it now, we could, but those are sort of the partnerships we're working with, as far as you know, universities and things who could create those widgets for us to be specific for our needs and our environment.Ray Loewe  22:11Okay, so now let's change the tenor of this a little bit because there's all kinds of memory care out there. Okay. And to some extent, you get what you research and you get what you pay for. And let's talk about your project, specifically here. Now, you have pretty much a state-of-the-art memory care going where we are, okay. But you have this project that Lauren was talking about with the single rooms, the 10 rooms to a group or their own private dining room, the street scenes and things like that. And that's in process of actually being developed now, where you are. So first, is there a website so the people who want to know more about this can tack on and look at it?Lauren Renehan  23:01Yes, foundation.WillowValleyCommunities.org is our Foundation website. And that's really where we're hosting a lot of the information surrounding this future Memory Care Center. So if people log on to there, there tabs at the top, the about tab goes to opportunities for giving, and you can click on memory care center right there and learn about everything.Ray Loewe  23:24Okay, so if I want to find out, and we'll publish that so that people don't have to remember that, we'll put that in our podcast notes. And going back to Jeff over here, I know, the way that you're putting this together is fascinating because you have three partners in funding this thing. And at first, that bothered me and the more I got to think about it, the more I got that being part of this involves being part of it. So talk a little bit about what you're trying to do and when this thing is going to take place at Willow Valley, or at least as best you can.Jeff Kenderdine  24:00Sure. The overall project budget, if you will, is $50 million. And Willow Valley Communities is putting in $30 million of its own resources. And we often get asked, Willow Valley Communities is a 501c3 organization and we get asked often that well, why can't they just build this on their own? And the answer is they could build a Memory Care Center, $30 million Memory Care Center, but it wouldn't be this memory care center. And the beauty of you know, our involvement as a Foundation is we get to bring philanthropy to make this possible and make it happen. And the difference is it's not imposed on everyone like a tax, or an increase in fees. This is truly, like the word philanthropy implies, this is a choice because people care about it. They care about the impact that it's going to have. And our job has really been just to have individual conversations like this, group conversations and educating people about what this means, and the impact that it's going to have for not only themselves, their friends and family, but future generations. And the response we've had has been absolutely amazing.Ray Loewe  25:17I'm excited about it. I mean, this is going to be me at some point in time in the future.  Jeff Kenderdine  25:23It's going to be all of us.  Ray Loewe  25:23And being able to contribute and help in the design and the building of this is great. And you've marshaled outside help to do this too. And in the form of matching stuff. So good job, whatever it is you're doing, keep going it. All right. We're near the end of our time so let me ask Lauren first, do you have any closing comments or anything that we didn't say that you think we have to address?Lauren Renehan  25:49I think if people get the chance to watch the little video that's on our website, they'll learn so much about the amenities that will be there. So, not just the grocery store, like Jeff mentioned, but a bistro-like a sit down restaurant, an indoor stage, that courtyard is going to be the size of a football field. So things like that to create that normalcy, where it's no longer appropriate for someone living with dementia, or no longer comfortable rather for them to go out into those public spaces as their world begins to shrink. That's really going to be key to changing the conversation here and reducing that stigma so that all of those generations and friends and family are coming to visit. The other thing I think is so important is the caregiver support that Jeff touched on, and we will have an adult day service where caregivers can come and bring their person living with dementia to enjoy the amenities of the Memory Care Center. And so this isn't so much about what it's going to do to change the lives of those living with dementia at the center. But for all of the caregivers, you know, across our community and county and state and region to come in and get some education and have a little bit of reprieve from what they do on a 24/7 basis.  Ray Loewe  26:58Yeah. And Jeff, final comments?  Jeff Kenderdine  27:00Yeah, I believe the one thing I think is important for the audience to understand is that they're not alone in this. As a caregiver, it felt very lonely and I had no idea about how to interact with my father with dementia and knew nothing about it. And oftentimes, it's the health of the caregiver that really suffers, that they wind up saying, I just can't do this anymore. And then they move to a Memory Care Center. But this really starts to remove that stigma associated with dementia and enables that conversation. In fact, because of this project, we've had countless conversations with individuals that have been touched by dementia in some way, shape, or form. And there's a lot of fear associated with it, family members, caregivers, and we really want to be the hub for training, providing the support that they need, and really just to lighten an otherwise dark journey. And this is all about creating those moments of joy, moments of happiness, where the family members come, the grandkids come and they want to visit in our sit-down bistro restaurant. You know, where do you see that in a Memory Care Center?Ray Loewe  28:15Well, you know, thank you both for your comments. I think it's very helpful for us people who think we're the luckiest people in the world and know about this because this is going to get in our way and it's something that we have to figure out how to get around. And the technology is there, the thought is there. I think it's a wonderful project. So thanks for being with us and Bill, sign us off.Outro  28:40Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world. 

Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to "Changing the Rules." We have an incredible guest today and I'm incredibly excited about doing this conversation that we're going to have, and you'll understand in a minute. But, I did want to take a minute and talk about the fact that I'm changing the rules. We try and talk to one of the luckiest people in the world every week. The luckiest people in the world are people who kind of design their own lives, figure out what they want to do and then they step into their personally designed lives and live them under their own terms. You're going to see that Don Helin, who is certainly one of those people today, and he does that. We also named our show, "Changing the Rules." One of the reasons for that is the luckiest people in the world only rules. But, they need to sometimes take all those rules that have been given to them over the years by the church, their parents, their schools, their businesses, and everything else. In this case, the military, okay, and try to sculpt them to fit their own lives. According to Steve Jobs, when you live your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. All right. So, Don Helin, on military eye, travel writer, lobbyist, and award-winning author. Good morning, Don. Don Helin01:48Well, good morning, Ray. It's great to be here.Ray Loewe01:50Did I miss anything in your background here? I think we got the highlights, right? Don Helin01:53Yeah, the luckiest guy in the world because I'm married to Elaine Howe, and she's probably one of the sweetest people in the world. So, that makes me pretty lucky.Ray Loewe02:00So, when we were preparing for this interview, I started talking to Don. Don is an award-winning author. Let me just give you a partial list of his books, Twins, Roof of the World, Long Walk Home, Angels Revenge, Secret Assault, and The Kingdom Come. I'm sure I left some out. You know, I was looking at Don's website yesterday and kind of a reviewing for this meeting. All of a sudden I see on there, one of my all-time favorite authors (that I've read, every one of his books) is endorsing Don's book, Twins.  A guy by the name of John Lead. Let me read one of his quotes real quickly, "Terrifying tale that is flawlessly constructed." This is what we're talking to this morning. Before I let you loose here. The reason I'm excited is I've always wanted to get into the head of an author that I really like and try and figure out what makes him tick. Because how in the heck do you get these plots? How do you get these characters? They got to come from some creative mind from somewhere.Don Helin03:15Okay, you got most of them. You're absolutely right. I'm lucky because I started out with my books, and I created a character. My character is Zack Kelly. He's an army colonel that works for the President's National Security Adviser. When I was learning the trade, I happened to be mentored by a guy named Lee Childs. Lee has quite a character that he's used over the years. So rather than having a different character, each book, I've learned to live with Zack Kelly. Zack has a small team that work with him on the President's National Security Advisor. That team is to help the National Security Advisor cut through bureaucracy, which there's plenty of in the military. When something happens, he doesn't wait and go through five different layers. He sends somebody out to see if he can figure out what's going on.Ray Loewe04:22So, what comes first when you write a book, the character or the plot?Don Helin04:28For me, it's the characters, pretty much ongoing. But, you've got a whole lot of other characters and it's the old saw of what's more important, a plot or a character. They both have their place. Also, when everybody's making this argument, they forget all about the setting, because you have to put your character someplace that the people can see and can enjoy. He has to show he can live someplaceay Loewe04:59Alright, let's go back half a step here, you have your character that you've developed over time. So, I'm sure going forward, a plot comes after the character. Let's talk about what it took to develop this character, and how do you have to think about a character? You got to know this guy inside out, right? Don Helin05:21Yeah, I was really fortunate, I had gotten probably about three books with Zach. I was never quite comfortable about him. Then, I happened to attend a writers conference and at that writers conference was a creative writing professor from Berkeley. He said, "What you have to do is develop a bio, for each one of your characters, not just your lead character, but your villain, and all the key people. Because, you know, some people think, well, I'm going to make this awful villain. The villain is, and all your characters have to be some good and some bad. So, what I did, there's three areas that we develop for that character, one is a physical, second is a social, and third is a psychological. By the physical, we're not saying how important it is or how tall he is. What is important? If he's a little guy, what did that due to his development? Was he bullied?  You can kind of take his physical characteristics and say, "Hey, how did that help him or hold him in developing?" Suppose Barbra Streisand, couldn't sing? How would her life have changed? So you take the physical traits and then you take where they grew up. You know, were they private school in New England? Or were they in PT 104 In New York City? How would that develop? Then psychological, for example, my hero, Zack Kelly has a very moderate case of post-traumatic stress disorder, which once in a while, he's out doing some, and he starts having a problem. So, these are the things that make our character human. By developing a bio for each one of those characters, I don't fumble on what they would be because what we're trying to do is develop motivation. In other words, what you want to do is develop your characters. For example, you got your heroes, Zack Kelly, and you got the villain. Each of them are motivated based on what's in their bio motivated to do something. When they're both motivated, and they're motivated in the opposite direction. What happens? You've got conflict. Conflict is what makes the book.Ray Loewe07:57Yeah. So, are you Zack Kelly?Don Helin08:02Am I Zack Kelly? I'm asked that a lot. I would have to say I'm not as good-looking as Zack Kelly. I don't have as many friends as Zack Kelly, as far as ladies that think he's... I'm not quite the athlete, that Zack Kelly is. Because, I think they always say in the bios, your characters are kind of dramatized to be special. Because, if you make your hero, just kind of an average guy, he's not as exciting as if he's an interesting guy.Ray Loewe08:37Yeah, I'm sure. So when you came up with Zach Kelly, how much of that came out of your experience being in the military? How much of it came from research that you did? How much of it came from just seeing people on the street?Don Helin08:53It's hard to say what percentage, but it's all involved, you know, because Zach, for example, is a single parent. That's what makes him human. The first two books, Zach did not have his daughter living with him. But his wife ended up in trouble. So, Laura came to live with him. Now Zach is while he's out saving the world someplace and doing all the stuff he's been writing about. He gets a phone call, Dad, you're supposed to be here. You're coaching my soccer team, Dad, come on. That's reality, and everybody can kind of live in that story. So, guess who's got three beautiful daughters who have been through that? So it's kind of growing on me. Things that have happened to me. Things I learned in the Pentagon, and things I've just picked up along the way.Ray Loewe09:53So your characters actually evolve and change? Okay. What about some of the other characters? You ever just meet people on the street and find out all of a sudden, you know, their character in your book?Don Helin10:05I think the best one... I'm glad you mentioned that. Elaine and I were up in Canada, we always love to go into bookstores. We were sitting there and my wife's an artist, so she always has her camera with her and this guy comes in, and he's got orange stripe down the center of his head. He's got your earrings, a nose ring. He's got the black boots and all that. I said to Elaine, I said, "Can you get his picture for me?" She said, "Sure." What she does, since she never wants anybody to know she's taking their picture so she will hold up the camera and then she shakes the camera. I say, "What's wrong?" She says, "I don't know."  Well, she's got four pictures of the guy. So what I did is, I took him home in a picture. I put them in this file that I have of people. One day, Zach is up to his neck at the Pentagon and he comes home, and he pulls up in front of the house and Laura is up his daughter, his 18 and a half-year-old daughter is up talking to this guy. What does this guy look like? He's got an orange stripe on his head, got earrings, and nose ring. Zack walks up and Laura says, "Dad, dad, I want you to meet Rodney Barnes. Rodney is the lead guitar for the evildoers. I met him six months ago and I I know he's not your kind of guy. But, Dad, I hope you'll go to one of his concerts with me because I'm all excited for you to get to know Rodney because I really like him. Zach looks at Rodney. Rodney? Yeah, man, that's me and that goes on from there. See, there's a cliche character that ends up there. What is Rodney really like? You don't find out for a while. So, you got to buy out on Rodney. If I want to be in one of your books, I have to have orange hair. Is that what you're telling me? We have to know enough to make you an interesting character and make you believable.Ray Loewe12:27Okay, so these BIOS continue. How many pages is Zach's bio at this point right?Don Helin12:34Right now it's about almost two pages.Ray Loewe12:38Let's switch a little bit because another part of a book is the plot. Where the heck do these come from? Where do they come from?Don Helin12:49Ray, they're everywhere. It's a matter of looking. Let me just tell you, my fourth book, Long Walk Home developed when I was up in New York. It turned out that I would go to thriller fest every year and the Grand Hyatt Hotel where thriller fest had the program, had a special discount. They said we'll give you a big discount, it's only going to cost you $230 a night to stay in the hotel. I'm lucky because I'm retired military. So, the Coast Guard has a guest house on a side island. I thought well, what I will do is just stay at the guest house, then every morning on Staten Island, then every morning I would catch the Staten Island Ferry. We would take it across, then we get the Metro and buzz up to the program. You know, what a thriller writer is always looking for is two little words. What if, What if, one day as I was riding across on the Staten Island Ferry, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and flying around. Then, all of a sudden, I thought what if somebody hijacked the Staten Island Ferry. Then I said, "Why would anybody do that? Who would do that?" From that question, developed Long Walk Home, when the Staten Island Ferry is hijacked where Laura is on it. That's the story that gets you going.Ray Loewe14:40Cool. Okay, so obviously you're a creative guy, you're observant. You've got some background that filters into your books and stuff like that. But, you know, when we were talking, one of the things that you really said is that you don't do this alone. Okay, that you've been involved in all these writing associations, and you have mentors.  Why don't you take a minute and talk about a couple of your mentors and how they impacted what you do? Because we probably have some people up there, who all want to write that great novel, and have no idea how to begin.Don Helin15:13I'm so lucky, I've been an active member of PEN writers, which is a statewide writers group. In every conference, they always have what they call, a new writer can bring in just the first two pages of your book. Then, seasoned writers, they have agents and editors who will read it and give you feedback. I felt so good about these two pages. I thought, oh, man, these are wonderful. My writer, who was Nancy Martin, who has written something like 50 novels, and I thought, oh, man, she's going to love it. And of course, you know, what happened? She tore it to shreds, you know. So I limped out of there and then I went home and I started to think. Let me think, now, I have not written any novels yet and Nancy has written 50.  Is there a chance, she may have some idea of what she's talking about? So I took her advice, I worked through the book again and that became my first published book.Ray Loewe16:21Okay, so these are not self-published books. You actually have a real agent, a publisher, and everything else. So how did that come about? Because most people don't have that when they start? Don Helin16:34What you do is... There's a big fat document called "Writer's Market." You can get it at every library and every bookstore. You go in, and you start going through it. You say, okay, go to thrillers, who are all the publishers that publish thrillers? Who are all the agents that help you with that? You go in, and you start sending out letters, and you become this guy that keeps getting all these turndowns from publishers and agents and editors. You know, until one day, you get what is called, we call "The Call." The call comes, and it's, "Hi, Don, this is Shirley and I'm from Medallion Press and we'd like to publish your book. That is the call!Of course, then I got another call because I published it. That was my first novel and I had a second one all set when I got another call. They said, "We're sorry, but we're discontinuing our mass market line. We could keep publishing you as an e-book, but not as a mass market." I said, "How would that work?"  I looked at Elaine, she looked at me and I said, "So, we started all over again, with sending out those letters and all that sort of stuff."Ray Loewe17:53So, a lot of it comes from hanging out at these writers' conferences and meeting people. Talk a bit about the mentors, because you had Lee Childs. Lee Childs is another guy that I read extensively. So again, your book just went up on the list and more.  I only have one book, and I think I'm going to dump it and go to yours. Let's talk a little bit about mentors.  How do you get them? What happens? How do they affect what you do?Don Helin18:18Yeah, it's the group that you join.  I joined International Thriller Writers and they have what they call "The Debut Authors Group." Now, you have to go after it, you have to go sign up. Then, they meet like, once a month, and everything that they do is online, because you have people in all the countries, all the cities throughout the United States. Lee is the coordinator. Lee was our coordinator and then he would bring in John Bland, and all these other wonderful writers.  Each one would talk about how to do setting and how to write a bio, and how to do all this sort of stuff. It was so helpful. That was really it plus you met people who could help you, who could give you blurbs, who could do stuff like that. So, I think, between 10 writers, and International Thriller Writers, I got so much help. Now, what I'm doing, I'm also a mystery writer for America. They have now a mentor program. So, I'm a mentor and there's not much I can do for lead trials. There's not much I can do for Nancy Martin, who now has over 100 books, but writers pass it down. You know, my job, I think now is to help writers coming up through the system.Ray Loewe19:46Outstanding! So you got your bio of your characters, you got your plot, but you also have to be a politician because you got to show your book and you got to position the right way. Take a minute. We're almost at the end of our time. Take a second... What kind of advice would you give to people who are those aspiring writers out there? Do you just put it aside and say, I can't do this? Or how do you get motivated?Don Helin20:13Well, what do you want to do? See, a writer has to have two personalities. One, writing is an art, I always tell new writers, writing is an art. The publishing is a business. I spend probably half my time writing, but I spend the other half marketing. That's why I have a website that people can go to. I'm very active on Facebook. I'm very fortunate, that my publisher is very active. We now are on Zoom. We have a whole program called "Zoom into Books," and monthly we'll do a presentation. Then they'll say, "Hey, if you want Don's book, you can go to his publisher, and just pick it up." She's got a number of my signed things that she can paste into the book, so you can get a signed book.Ray Loewe21:10Well, I'm not sure I'm met my goal here. I think I'm partially into the head of an author here. Okay. You certainly have had a fascinating life. You've certainly, your processes are extremely interesting. Thanks, for people that are listening, and who can take some of your advice. Do you have any final comments you want to make before we sign off?Don Helin21:30No. It's just that I have really enjoyed learning to write. But, the one thing that I would say is "Don't Give Up." Most people will start, they have that great idea but get in the middle of it, and you get to what I call the saggy middle. You look at this saying, that's no good, it'll never sell, it's terrible and you quit. Don't quit! Keep writing and even if you're not crazy about it, get through.  Because I ended up going back through my book editing probably 15-20 times. So the first one, that first time through is not that great. And it's not. But you know what, you can make a great by working hard on it. I have a number of readers who helped me, who give me good ideas, and you know what, right, I listened to them. I learned through Nancy -- I listened to them.Ray Loewe22:28This is why Don is one of the luckiest people in the world. With that, I don't think there's anything more to say except your website, which is DonHelin.com. Okay, d o n h e l i n and we're going to post that on the notes when we publish your conversation here. So, people can find out where to get a start to meet you. And Luke sign is off. Outro  22:59Thank you for listening to "Changing the Rules." Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Ray Loewe00:02Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world. Good morning everybody and welcome to our new podcast studio in Willow Valley, Pennsylvania. And we're here with brand new equipment, we have an engineer with us, Steve Wright, and Steve's at, I guess you call it a keyboard. Steve, I don't know what it is, but you manipulate things to make us sound better. All right. And I've got a great guest today. But before we get into the guest, I want to go back and mention the luckiest people in the world. So, the luckiest people in the world are those people who design their own lives, and then step into them and live them under their own terms. And you're going to see today that Kim is definitely one of those people. And the name of our show is Changing the Rules. And you know, all through our lives, we've been fed rules. We got them from our parents, the schools came in and threw new rules at us, then our jobs throw rules at us, the church thows rules at us. And in between, we've had other people that throw rules at us. And I think it was Steve Jobs that said that if you live your life by somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. And if you think about it, rules are meant for two things. They either tell you what you can't do or what you have to do. So, the luckiest people in the world are pretty good at sifting through those rules and changing them to make them fit their lifestyle and the lifestyle that they want to have. So today our guest is from downtown Lititz, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles away from here. And there are four themes that she mentioned to me when we did our pre-interview. So here's what they are: Chocolate is a recurring theme in my life. All right. Adventure travel is a recurring theme in my life. I make my choices so that I can be happy. And last but not least, I love my life. So, Kim Schaller, I hope I pronounced that right, is our guest today. And Kim say hello to everybody. Kim Schaller02:39Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. Ray Loewe02:42Okay, well, you've had an exciting life. And I think what's going to happen is after this is done, everybody, first of all is going to know you're one of the luckiest people in the world. And then second of all, they're all going to want your life. So let's talk a little bit about going back. You worked many, many years for Hershey, right? Kim Schaller03:02I did, 31 years.Ray Loewe03:0431 years. So there is chocolate in your life, right? Kim Schaller03:08There is chocolate in my life for sure. Ray Loewe03:10And now you live in a condo, which is in what? Kim Schaller03:14In the old Wilbur Chocolate Factory. So I worked for a chocolate company and I live in a chocolate factory.Ray Loewe03:19And I would bet that somewhere between you eat chocolate too? Kim Schaller03:22I do.Ray Loewe03:23Yeah, isn't that wonderful? Kim Schaller03:24You know, I think when chocolate is around you, I'm just sort of immune to the lure at this point. It's there, but I do enjoy it.Ray Loewe03:32Okay, so you've had those two things, and then at this point in your life, your life is composed of being on several advisory boards, we're not going to take the time to talk about all of them. But you're active, you keep your mind active and stuff like that. But what we really want to talk about is the adventure travel that you are doing. Okay, and I think this is what. I'm searching for a word here, but this is what Kim's life is all about. And I think the first thing to start with is you're single, right?Kim Schaller04:08I am. I was married 26 years, but I'm single now.Ray Loewe04:11And you don't let this stop you from going anywhere. Kim Schaller04:15No, I don't. Ray Loewe04:16So, everybody out there that's single, get rid of the barriers right now. There's no excuse.Kim Schaller04:22Especially single women. I think a lot of women don't want to do that. There's a definite risk and there's fear. But you just have to do it.Ray Loewe04:30And you don't really travel alone. I mean, you leave alone, you're by yourself, but you join groups of people. So you're not alone. And there's some structure there and you get to meet a whole bunch of people that you didn't know before.Kim Schaller04:41Right, I'm into active travel. So I've traveled with companies that do hiking and biking and multi-adventure trips all around the world. I start out alone and I will usually visit the country for a couple days on my own before the trip actually starts. And then I meet all kinds of interesting people. The trips range from 10 to 20 people and we bike and hike and kayak. And so I love it. I love it.Ray Loewe05:05Okay, so give us an example of someplace you've been recently that excited you? Kim Schaller05:10Well, I'll tell you what. I mean, I figure I'm 64 years old, I've got plenty of years ahead. And I have spent quite a bit of time in Europe. But these trips, I go to places that really scare me, I go, the further away, the better. So I've been to Patagonia, I've been to Bhutan, I did the Mont Blanc circuit and France and Italy and Switzerland, Iceland. I go places that I know, the older I get, and I know courage is going to be a big thing as I get older, so I go to the places that scare me now. So that's been my sort of philosophy on travel.Ray Loewe05:42And, you know, we met some people in Antarctica a long time ago in and the story that I remember the most is, we used to go out every day on an excursion. And one day, the people we had dinner with the night before just didn't go out. And I cornered them at lunch. And I said, where were you this morning? They said, well, we looked at the hill we had to walk up and we didn't think we could make it. And that's been a lesson that has stuck with me. They came back and said, you know, we put off this trip until we felt stronger financially. And now we feel really strong financially, and we have the time available, and we can't walk up the hill.Kim Schaller06:19I know. Exactly. That's a great illustration of what I'm talking about. We've gotta do it now.Ray Loewe06:24Okay, so give me an example of the kinds of groups that you might travel with. And you know, where do you find these things? How do you get the idea for your next trip?Kim Schaller06:32Well, the biggest company that I've worked for is Backroads. And they're headquartered in Berkeley, California, and you just got to backroads.com. And there's trips literally all over the world with all different difficulty levels. So if you're looking for a simpler kind of hiking trip, you do that, but the challenging ones right now are the ones I've been going for. So it keeps me fit. It just keeps me realizing that there's a big world out there. Well, COVID really screwed with me though. I had to cancel two trips during COVID that I was really excited for. But backroads I would really recommend people take a look at that.Ray Loewe07:07Well, I would bet you didn't cancel them, you postponed them. Kim Schaller07:10I postponed them. But yeah, Machu Picchu was one of them that I was really looking forward to. But it is postponed. Exactly.Ray Loewe07:18So when you go on one of these trips, and they say there's hiking on it, how far will you walk a day when you do these things? Kim Schaller07:25Well, it depends. Like a challenging trip, you could hike, I don't know, 15 miles a day. But the challenging part is the elevation, the elevation gains. When you did Mont Blanc, we were doing elevation gains of 4,000 feet a day. So you hike up 4,000 feet and down 4,000 feet. So it was the elevation that really gets me, not the distance.Ray Loewe07:46So, for you, you know you have to be in shape. But you're telling us also that if you're not in as good shape as you are, there are still trips? Kim Schaller07:54There are still trips.Ray Loewe07:54Yeah. Okay, so let's take a couple of examples. Now you were talking about Bhutan? Land of Happiness. So give us a couple minutes here.Kim Schaller08:07Well, that was one right after I retired, I retired seven years ago. And happy had always been part of my career. I worked for Hershey, and if people know, Hershey Park happiness or Hershey is one of the key brand attributes of Hershey. So I was fascinated with this whole happiness concept. And I heard about Bhutan, where they measure the citizen's happiness versus gross national product. They're less focused on economic factors and more on lifestyle and wellbeing. So that just really intrigued me. So I went there. It's a little tiny country of about 800,000 people between China and India. And it is just a fascinating place. So that's where I went.Ray Loewe08:49So when you talk about fascinating now you're mingling with local people, right? And so what makes them.. why are they happy?Kim Schaller08:57Well, because they understand that the leadership of the country puts their happiness ahead of economic development. So nature, which is their key, natural resources is the key to Bhutan's success. 70% of the country is still forested. Tourism is a big aspect for them, but they are really trying to manage the level of tourism so life doesn't change too dramatically.Ray Loewe09:21You mean, they are actually leaders that want to make you happy?Kim Schaller09:25They are leaders that focus on that. Ray Loewe09:27Okay, you find some of them for us? Kim Schaller09:29Exactly. And they measure it, every two years, they do a survey of the population to see how they're tracking with happiness. And I'll tell you, they're not the happiest country in the world, like Finland and Norway score higher, but they're working at it, which is what I believe is progress.Ray Loewe09:47Okay. Now another one. This is one I've always wanted to go to, and I've been on the fringes of this one but Patagonia. So I was down at the bottom of South America, Ushuaia you know, it's kind of where you enter one way to Patagonia but what's Patagonia all about? What do you do when you're there?Kim Schaller10:07I hiked. I mean that's basically what did, I hiked. But I was telling you before the best thing about Patagonia is you're in the same time zone it get on a plane and travel 15 hours south but you still don't have to adjust to a different time zone. So you can literally hit the ground running when you get there. Which is what we did, hit the ground hiking. Ray Loewe10:27Okay, now you're saying you hiked but you know, when you take these trips that you take, they do portage luggage and things like that. I'm not carrying my two suitcases.Kim Schaller10:39Let's be clear. I am not into getting in a tent and sleeping overnight. No, we stay in beautiful hotels unique to the regions. But no, you get in a van and they take you from trailhead to trailhead. And I'm not carrying my bag so we should be clear. I don't want to mislead anybody.Ray Loewe10:56Yeah, especially older folk like me. You know, I'm into hiking but I'm also not into camping. You know, my idea of camping is at least a Marriott.Kim Schaller11:07I need a bed. Yes.Ray Loewe11:10All right, so what enthralled you about Patagonia? Why would I want to go there?Kim Schaller11:15I think it truly felt to me otherworldly. It is so spectacularly beautiful. We spent one day just hiking on a glacier, which I think everybody at some point in your life, you need to experience these kinds of things.Ray Loewe11:29And Patagonia is where? It's the southern part of Chile?Kim Schaller11:34We actually were on the Brazil on that other side, the Argentina side, but we saw the Chilean mountains and they said over across that ridge is Chile. So yeah, we were right there. Ray Loewe11:45Okay, how's the wine in those areas?Kim Schaller11:47The wine is great. The food is great. Ray Loewe11:50We have to get the important things. You know, our engineer is sitting here, thinking you know, hiking is okay. But you know a glass of wine at night is a necessary part of things.Kim Schaller12:00And that's the camaraderie and that's how you build the relationships at night to sit and have a glass of wine and just reminisce about your day.Ray Loewe12:06Okay, talk about Iceland.Kim Schaller12:08And Iceland is so easy to get to from the northeast. I mean, I think if you live in California, it's a whole different thing. But you're there in a quick number of hours, direct flight into Reykjavik. And it was also like the otherworldly places, places that just don't look like anything you see in the US.Ray Loewe12:27So I have been to Iceland. And one of the things I remember this is not going to be one of your highlights. There's actually a Pizza Hut in Reykjavik.Kim Schaller12:35And there's a McDonald's too which is mortifying. Ray Loewe12:38And well, I stay away from that. But we finally got to the point where one night we just had to have a pizza. So we go to this place and the pizza is different. You know, and if you think about it, the pizza is heavy in cheese, light in tomato sauce because goats and cows are readily available but tomatoes? Trying to grow those in the northern climates doesn't work.Kim Schaller13:00No, it's all hothouse. They grow everything there.Ray Loewe13:03So I take it you have not done the Pizza Hut? Kim Schaller13:05No, I have not. I ate and, don't judge me, but I did it because when in Rome, I ate whale, I ate puffin, I ate horse. So, I felt the need to try the things that were to that area. So I tried them. And I'm still here. I did feel bad about the puffin though. Those adorable birds are just everywhere. And I ate one.Ray Loewe13:31Okay, I'm gonna let that just kind of sit and dangle here. You know, it's a shame you're not passionate about this travel. Okay, so where else have you been that we have to talk about, and then where haven't you been that you're going next?Kim Schaller13:48My next trip is Morocco. That's coming up in the fall. I'm gonna go to Morocco and go to Casablanca, which I'm really excited for. That will be the pretrip, but just hiking out into the desert in Morocco and riding a camel and so that's coming up. I've been to Costa Rica, I've been to Belize, Cartagena. I really like South America, that seems to be a place where I have a lot of interest in.Ray Loewe14:12Now what causes that? Just uniquely you think? Kim Schaller14:18I don't know. I think maybe I have this sort of anti-Europe thing at this point. Because I feel like I can go to Europe easily as I get older, but I want to go to the places like I was in Columbia, South America. And it's kind of a pretty scary place when you're going through the forest and not knowing what's going to be around the next corner. So it's a fear thing. I'm just, I want to conquer those, and then I feel like I can go to the tamer, calmer, more civilized places.Ray Loewe14:46All right. I'm thinking here, you've got my mind going a mile a minute, you know, and I thought I'd been to a lot of places but you've been a lot of places that I haven't been to. Kim Schaller14:58That was the goal when I started my travel and again, I didn't start this until after I retired. Because I was like a lot of people, I was a working person, raising a daughter, doing all the more traditional vacations while raising her. You know, Disney World, Turks, and Caicos, Jamaica, like all the things that other people do.Ray Loewe15:18Now, how do you stay in shape for this? I mean, do you actually have to a workout routine so that you can take your trips?Kim Schaller15:24I do. And I have a big dog, I have a golden retriever, who it's required daily walking with him. So, I do a lot of walking. I bike around Lancaster County, which is just such a beautiful biking destination, but I do have an E-bike. So, full disclosure, I have an E-bike. Just because I want to protect my knees, and I love biking. Ray Loewe15:46So okay, let's get into some advice here. So, I think I know that when people listen to this, they're gonna say, oh, my God, where did this lady come from? You know, how did she do this? Why? Why did she do all of these things? So talk a little bit about, and you can structure this towards single females if you want, or you can structure it towards anybody. What's important when you think about your future and how you're doing this, why do people want to get out? How do they get out? What are the things that they have to do?Kim Schaller16:14I think, for me, as I said, I was married for 26 years. I just have complete freedom right now. I don't have to compromise. I don't have to share and this might sound like I'm so selfish, but I am just loving this stage of my life. Doesn't mean I want to be alone for the rest of my life. But it just means that I really love the opportunity that I have to do what I want, when I want.Ray Loewe16:46Okay, the first trip that you took alone, where was it to?Kim Schaller16:50I went to Sevilla, I'd hiked from Granada to Sevilla in Spain. That was my first one.Ray Loewe16:56Go to lady.Kim Schaller16:58No, I don't think that and I don't think I'm extraordinary in any way. I think this is within every single person. You just have to do it. Because we've got one chance here, we're here once. So if we don't do it now, I don't want to be at the end of my life and just wish I would have done things.Ray Loewe17:18Okay, I think that's probably a good place to stop. But we're not going to stop there. I've got one more question. So if you're looking at the world, how many countries do you think you've been in?Kim Schaller17:29I don't know. I haven't counted. I need to do that.Ray Loewe17:32And how many continents? What continents haven't you been on yet?Kim Schaller17:37I haven't been to Australia. I haven't been to New Zealand. I haven't been to Soviet Union. I haven't been there's been a lot of places I haven't been, truly.Ray Loewe17:48So, you're gonna live to be 140 years old. So you can get these all in. Kim Schaller17:52I'm gonna try. Ray Loewe17:53Yeah. And I think that's one of the big lessons that I'm gathering from you is that it's a really big world. And if you want to see any of it, you better get off your tail and get moving too. Kim Schaller18:03And get over the fear. Ray Loewe18:04All right, we're about out of time. Any last-minute comments before we sign off?Kim Schaller18:08No, Ray. And you inspire me too. I mean, you really do, people like you, people need to be listening to people like you.Ray Loewe18:16Okay, well, that's a commercial and we'll get you on the social media channels soon. And you can do that. But, you know, thanks so much for being you. And thanks for being here. Because, you know, the luckiest people in the world design their own lives, whatever they are. And in your case, it's obviously built around travel, and it's built around staying fit and healthy. And thanks for being a role model that you are and we're going to have to have you back after the next adventure just to catch up. All right. And let's, let's finish with one thing that emphasizes and I got this from a book a long time ago, and that is that there's no such thing as a bad trip. Only a good story. Kim Schaller19:00So true.Ray Loewe19:01So, Steve, sign us off, please. Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:Intro  00:02Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:18Hi, everybody, this is Ray Lowe, and welcome to Changing the Rules. You know, this week we're going to do something a little different. We also have been recording podcasts on another network and we had one the other day that is just so good. And it just fits so well with the Changing the Rules network that I have to make it available to you. So, we're going to be talking with a young lady by the name of Marianne, and rather than make a lot of comments, let's just listen to our podcast.  Welcome to the willow Valley podcasting channel where exciting podcasts are created by Willow Valley residents, for Willow Valley residents, and about Willow Valley residents. And good morning, everybody. My name is Ray Loewe, and I'm a member of the podcast club here. And I want to welcome everybody to our brand new podcast studios here at Willow Valley communities. And we have an exciting guest today. All right, so I need to kind of set the stage for this because Marianne is on the staff here. She works here; her full name is Mary Ann Steinhauer and I met her because she was running the concierge desk over in the north building. And she was indispensable to me. You know, first of all, she had all my packages and, unless I behaved, I couldn't get them. And second of all, whenever I needed some information about where to go or where something was going on, she's the person who had it. But then the surprise came because I found out that Marianne has hidden talents way beyond what she was doing. And I found out, and I don't remember how the conversation came about, and Marianne, you can fill us in, but I found out that Marianne pilots hot air balloons.Mary Ann Steinhauer  02:09It may have been a reference to how I was so full of hot air. And I just jumped right on it.Ray Loewe02:16Well, whatever it is, it just changed our whole relationship because I've been fortunate enough that I have been up in a hot air balloon. I've been in a chase car chasing around at other people, who were in a hot air balloon. And I was lucky enough to be at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, where 800 balloons went up in the air at one time and the sky was filled with color and it's absolutely spectacular.Mary Ann Steinhauer  02:43It's an amazing event.Ray Loewe02:45And then to find out Marianne here actually pilots one of these and so let me ask you a couple of questions before we get into hot air ballooning. Hot air ballooning is only part of Marianne, Marianne actually has a master's degree in elementary education. She has a master's degree in library science and she has been an author of a number of publications. And the other thing that I found interesting in your background is you actually took graduate studies in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. So, why did you do that? And what where did that take you?Mary Ann Steinhauer  03:25Well, I've always been fascinated with folklore, folk life, and also storytelling, and what a magnificent place, you know, to be studying that, you know, it was just absolutely amazing. So it was a graduate program for older people because I had already done my other education work. And I just lapped it up. I mean, I just got really, really excited. You know, I'm interested in what people consider really important to continue their traditions and their culture, and it's all through performance and storytelling, the oral tradition, and all of that, that is really, you know, I'm a storyteller. Ray Loewe04:17All right, now we're going to have to do another podcast some other day just on that because I think that whole area is phenomenal and, you know, everybody has a story. Mary Ann Steinhauer  04:28I believe you're right.Ray Loewe04:29Everybody has a story. And the secret is to get it out there. And you know, you're never going to get the story if you don't talk to people. And ever since I started talking to Marianne about what she loves and what she's passionate about, it just makes me have more fun when I go down there. So thank you for that. And let's start with a really important question. So, why in the heck did you ever get interested in hot air ballooning?Mary Ann Steinhauer  04:59Wow. The first seeds were planted back when I was teaching at the lab school at Millersville University. And I was with the children out on the playground. And low and behold, here through the sky, we see this beautiful, hot air balloon. And not only did we see it flying, we noticed that it was coming toward us. And it ended up landing in the playground, at the playground. And I, of course, I had all the children were like all excited. And then I had to tell them, you know, you got to really be careful about this, but I was beside myself, I was more excited than they were. And it turns out that, you know, we managed to get safely around the balloon. And what happened was the pilot was stopping to get refueled. Because typically, and I, later on, found this out, that you can fly just so long before you have to stop and get more fuel. And so they were waiting for their chase vehicle to come with more fuel. Okay, so we didn't know this. But I was just I knew right then in there that I really wanted to go up in a hot air balloon. And I said to the children, I'm going to do this someday. And this was back in the 70s.Ray Loewe06:12Okay, and, you know, you talk about dancing with the wind. And that's how you feel when you're in the balloon, isn't it?Mary Ann Steinhauer  06:18Oh, absolutely. You know, people always ask, like, how do you steer the balloon? Well, really, you are dancing with the wind. And sometimes you, you know, you'll release it. First of all, you have to check the weather. But then you release this helium balloon to see which way the winds go. But then once you're up there, you know, you can take a turn, just because the wind says this is where you're going to go. And I know with the British people, they usually have a can of shaving cream. And when they're in the basket, and they're up aloft, they do a doppel of shaving cream to see which way it goes, then they can tell which way the lower winds are. Now you don't know about the upper winds. But you know, you can start to climb, and you sort of park there and you see where that takes you. Does it take you right? Does it take you left? And, I never had a can of shaving cream, I just spit out of the side and that worked.Ray Loewe07:18So that's kind of how you control the balloon, you control it by going up or down and finding the wind that's going kind of in their direction you want. Mary Ann Steinhauer  07:26Exactly.Ray Loewe07:27So that's why in Albuquerque at the balloon festival, they have these two levels where the balloons go one way at one level and they go up to another level and they go the other way. Is that what goes on? Mary Ann Steinhauer  07:37Absolutely. That's what happened. They are dancing with the wind.Ray Loewe07:41Incredible. Okay, so how does one get a license to pilot one of these things? Mary Ann Steinhauer  07:48Well, first of all, I spent a lot of time as a crew chief. Because my husband at hell she, at the time was very, very interested. He wanted me to take fixed-wing flying lessons. And you know, after the fourth lesson, when I had to stall the plane in the sky, I said, this is not for me. I think I would prefer being in the basket surrounded by this wicker. And I would rather be in a balloon. So, what does it take? Well, I did a lot of crewing and of course, you know what that's like, you have to chase the balloon. And you have to make sure that you handle landowner relations when you're on the ground. And also, you have two-way radios and you let them know, you know that there's there's a field that of course, they can see where the field is. But you sometimes have to clear permission. So I did a lot of crewing. And I would get thrown in the basket every now and then in fly. And I thought you know, I can do this. And before I knew it, I had like 100 hours in the balloon. And I took okay what do you need. And it's not just having the hours you have to be pilot in command, you have to know how the workings of the balloon are. But you also have to take a written test. You have to take an oral test. And just like a driving test, you have to take a test with an examiner, a federal examiner.Ray Loewe09:14Oh my. So, do you have to parallel park too?Mary Ann Steinhauer  09:17No, but I'll tell you what, you know, one of the things that's an absolute no, you don't want to land where there are horses, and you don't want to land in the middle of cows or any kind of livestock. The Federal examiner that I had for my test, you know, my driving test, and no, I didn't parallel park, but he said why don't you just land here? And I said I'm not landing there. There are cows there. You know, I'm not doing that. And while you know he's talking to me about where I should be landing he was testing me out to see if I could take off and land and do all that. He was messing around with the tanks he was turning the valves of the tank saw. And I looked at him and I slapped his hand and I said, stay away from that! You know, because he was gonna knock my pilot light. But he wanted to see if I was attentive to it. You know, if you have passengers, a lot of times they're touching all kinds of things. And that's a no no. Ray Loewe10:20So what do you do when you land someplace like in a farmer's field? That's where you become a diplomat, right? Mary Ann Steinhauer  10:26Yes, absolutely. And you hope that your chase crew has already, you know, set up, of course, I did that a lot. But if I was the pilot, you know, you wanted to make sure that it was okay. And most of the time, people love to have you there. And occasionally, we'd stop at an Amish farm. And the Amish men would hop in the basket and we'd give them the second leg of the flight. You know, we'd let them fly and they could see their land. They could see their handiwork in a way that they never could before.Ray Loewe11:00You know, you are a storyteller, aren't you? Okay, and what a great story. And you know, when I went hot air ballooning, the one time I was up in a balloon, we had a bottle of champagne with us. And, a basket with foods so that if we landed in a farmer's field, you know, we could we could have like a picnic and celebrate?Mary Ann Steinhauer  11:00Yes, well, yes. I know, when flying in France, they really love to have the wine and the champagne. But you have to understand that if you're the pilot, there is no alcohol, from you know, bottle to throttle. And you only have that once you land. And you have the food and the party and I love that part of it, too.Ray Loewe11:44Okay, so before we get into some of your adventures, I know our listeners are gonna want to know what one of these things cost.Mary Ann Steinhauer  11:54Well, when people asked me that, I mean, there's more than just the balloon, there's a basket and the tanks. And then there, the beautiful, artistic piece. It's called the envelope. And it's made of ripstop, nylon and some fireproof, you know, portions of it, where the flame goes. To answer your question, I always say it is like the cost of a car, like a luxury, nice luxury car. And the thing is, once you have the basket and your tanks and everything, you can fly with the envelope for so long. After how many hours you get on it, and over time, because it's heated up a lot, and it's put down and it goes through a lot, it gets porous. And so you know, a new balloon is really tight, like a new car. And you could always just change, you know, just get a new envelope, design a new envelope, and that's another cost, but you also need a chase vehicle. You need a fan to put cold air in. You need radios. You need little helium balloons. There's all kinds of equipment that you need before you even go out to a launch field and start the inflation.Ray Loewe13:18All right. So tell me you had to design your balloon at least once in your life. So when you design your first balloon, how do you design it? Would did you put on it?Mary Ann Steinhauer  13:28Well, first of all, we started out with a used balloon that had quite a few hours on it. And we knew that it was going to be good for us to learn how to fly and to have our instruction. But when it came time to actually designing our envelope, my husband really felt that we were flying in Lancaster County. So he designed a map, an outline of Lancaster County, and it was a yellow map and he had a red rose in the center so that people knew we were from Lancaster County. And then on my side of the balloon, I asked that they do the flying horse, Pegasus, which is a beautiful white flying horse. And whenever I'd see her coming up over the hill, you know, people would see this beautiful Pegasus, and Pegasus is definitely a symbol of inspiration and creativity. So it held a lot of meaning for me.Ray Loewe14:23Alright, I think you're more than a storyteller. I think you're a poet too. Okay, I mean, it's great. I can just see having so much fun with this. You know, first of all, being aloft is quiet, you know, except when that darn blast of propane takes off. And you just get these magnificent views. You know if people that are listening to this have never been up in a hot air balloon, you have to do this at some prime in your life. And you also have to be in the chase car because that's an adventure too. Mary Ann Steinhauer  14:55Oh, it is, it's a lot of fun. Ray Loewe14:56So, let's talk about some of the great places you've been, and let me give a list that you gave me, and then you pick the one that you want to talk about first. Okay? Mary Ann Steinhauer  15:05Okay.Ray Loewe15:05So you were in Austria flying in a balloon, you were in Costa Rica, you were in Spain, you were in Japan, you were in Leningrad. And then who knows where else in the United States you've been. All right. So pick one, and tell us what the appeal was, what the adventure was, and be a storyteller and a poet.Mary Ann Steinhauer  15:25Well, let me tell you. Oh, my goodness, alright, you mentioned Albuquerque, and I'm going to tell you about a time we were flying in Austria, and we didn't have our balloon, a lot of times, there's a network of balloons, ballooners, balloonists around the world. And so if we would be invited to fly in a particular country, there would be balloonists who would lend us their balloons, and then they would come to the United States, and we would reciprocate. So, it was a very, very nice thing. So we were in Austria, we were flying this particular balloon. And we were going over cows and churches and whatnot. And so I thought, well, let's see if we can just land here in this churchyard. And we came through and landed there and all of a sudden, I hear this brass music from a brass band. And I'm thinking, where is that coming from? I mean, this is a church, and out comes this band of Austrian brass trumpet, trombone, and tuba players, and they are serenading this balloon. You know, they were so excited. And they said to us, oh, you know what, we want to come to Albuquerque, you know, and I'm thinking yeah, well, we were rarely at Albuquerque, you know? And I thought, yeah, right, I will never see them. And so later on that year, we were in Albuquerque, and I was there early early morning. We get started at four o'clock in the morning, and we're out in the field. And of course, there's all these stands that are selling breakfast burritos and whatnot. And there are tents set up. And all of a sudden, I hear brass music coming from one of the tents. And lo and behold, it was the brass band that greeted us when we were in Austria. And they recognize me and I recognize them. And it was like a grand reunion. Ray Loewe17:22Incredible.Mary Ann Steinhauer  17:23They were they said they were going to come to Albuquerque. And they did. They did.Ray Loewe17:27Alright, we're getting near the end of our time, but pick one of the other places that you've been, and tell some other story.Mary Ann Steinhauer  17:35Well, I'll tell you, I should talk about Costa Rica, because we were friends with the Minister of Trade of Costa Rica, and his job was to bring new businesses into Costa Rica. And this was a number of years ago, he contacted the ballooning company that made the balloons in the United States and  his name was drawn Luis Escalante and he was definitely interested in getting more flights from Florida to Costa Rica from American Airlines. So he thought it might be a great idea to have a balloon that had the American Airlines logo on it, it would be great publicity. Well, my husband and I and our girls went to Costa Rica on two occasions. And we were in charge of teaching Don Luis how to fly this balloon. It was designed and it had the American Airlines on it. But I mean, what we saw, while we were there, the people were so friendly. There was flowers and beautiful plants everywhere and macaws flying in pairs. So I would see things like that, you know, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is really fantastic. Anyway, we came to the point where the training had gone so far, and it's time to do a solo flight. So Don Luis had to do a solo flight. Now you have to understand, his father-in-law also had a sugar plantation. And so we were flying, and actually over the plantation. And I, you know, I said, Don Luis, you can do this solo flight. This is really good. You know, I was on the chase vehicle. Ed was there, you know, so there we were, and he's getting ready to come in for his landing, actually on the plantation. And I thought this was really wonderful. And then all of a sudden, I hear the clanging of the tanks in the back of the pickup truck. And I looked at the power lines, and I saw that they were undulating. And so finally he landed, and the earth started to move. We were having an earthquake. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it actually happened at that moment when he was landing. And I said, Don Luis, that was a hell of a landing! I could not believe it!Ray Loewe20:03So welcome to Adventures in Costa Rica. And, you know, we're gonna do another one of these if I can get your attention later because the stories can go on I'm sure. Okay, but before we sign off, your daughter is also a hot air balloonist, isn't she?Mary Ann Steinhauer  20:19Oh, yes, my older daughter, the younger daughter never really cared for it. But the older daughter definitely took to it. And she's highly competitive. She actually competes all around the world right now. I mean, she lives in Colorado but she was in Lithuania, she's qualifying for the Women's Championship. And I think it's going to happen in Australia. Ray Loewe20:45You know, when you compete, what does that entail? Because you don't have control over where the balloon is going.Mary Ann Steinhauer  20:51No, but you do map your course. And there's always a big x at one of the fields. And the whole idea is to be able to fly over that X in your balloon and toss a beanbag that has your balloon number on it. And the closest you get to the center of the X, you're definitely you know, the winner or you get the ranking. But there's also a hare and hound. So  there's a hare balloon that leads the way and whoever can fly closest, and land in the same place that the hare does, the Hound is the winner. I mean, so there's those kinds of competitions. Ray Loewe21:40So who knew, right? So  again, you know, we're at the end of our time and Maryanne Steinhauer has been our guest, and she's opened up this whole world of hot air ballooning to us and she's available, stop at the North desk some time and if you're lucky, you'll see her. Mary Ann Steinhauer  21:59I do want to read one thing as we close. Ray Loewe22:02Okay, go ahead.Mary Ann Steinhauer  22:03That is called the balloonist prayer. The winds have welcomed you softly. The sun has blessed you with her warm hands. You have flown so well, and so high that God has joined you in your laughter and then gently set you back into the loving arms of Mother Earth.Ray Loewe22:24There's nothing more to say. So Luke, sign us off, please. Thanks for listening. And be sure to listen again next week. And every week when we'll have another exciting guest. I hope you enjoyed this. This is something we're going to do from time to time, and I think you can certainly see why our guest is one of the luckiest people in the world. So listen again next week and, Luke, sign us off.Outro  22:58Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest:  Sky BergmanSky's Website:  www.lives-well-lived.com Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:18Good morning, everybody. My name is Ray Loewe, I am the luckiest guy in the world. And I'm sitting here with Luke Cagno. Luke is our engineer here and in our brand new studios in Lancaster, actually in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And we have an incredible guest today, she has been with us before, and we're gonna get an exciting update. But before we get there, I want to remind everybody that what we try and do on this podcast is to interview one of the luckiest people in the world every week. And the luckiest people in the world are people who take control of their lives so that they can live them under their own terms. And when they do that, they're happier, they're more fulfilled, and they just seem to just never want to retire. They just keep going on and on and on and on. And the name on our show, changing the rules as a component of that. Because all through our lives, we're saddled with rules that everybody else gives us, our schools, our parents, our teachers, our jobs. And,  it was Steve Jobs I think that said, you know, when you're living your life under your own under somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life. And you find that the our luckiest people in the world changed the rules to make it work for them. So this morning, I want to welcome Skye Bergman. Now Sky, used to be a professor of film and videography. She's going to give us an update on what happened there. She came out with an exciting film that was a complete success. And she's going to tell us a little bit about that. And then she's going to tell us about a new project that she's working on that we're all going to get excited about. So Sky, say hello, and give us a little background about what's going on in your life.Sky Bergman02:10Hey Ray, thanks so much for having me. And it's really nice to be back on the show again. Great. So yeah, you know, I'm was lucky enough by as you mentioned, I was a professor of photography and video at Cal Poly State University. I taught photography for 30 years, and this past December, I decided that I was going to retire from that job not retire altogether, but retire from that job. So it would open up a space for me to have time to do all these passion projects that I'm working on. One of which, of course, was a live life film, which started with my grandmother, who at the age of 100, was still working out at the gym. And I was looking at approaching 50 and trying to figure out who my positive role models were going to be. And of course, there was my grandmother right in front of me. And I spent four years interviewing 40 people that were 75 and older with a collective life experience of 3000 years and put a film together called lives well lived. And it has as you mentioned and very successful, we had a great theatrical run with it, it's airing on PBS now. So if you're a PBS Passport member, you can find it or you can actually on Amazon and iTunes and on shop PBS it blows my mind. Because here's this little film that started with a love of my grandmother and has done super well. And you know, really, since then, I think one of the things that I really have wanted to do and become an advocate for our intergenerational connections and projects. And for me, I was lucky that I had my grandparents that were around me, I lived with my grandparents for a while even my great-grandmother was alive for many years until I was 19. I had her in my life and I kind of took for granted that I had this wonderful intergenerational connections and ties. And many, many people don't have that. And so that's kind of become my passion is to connect generations through share stories. And I'm really pleased that PBS Learning Media now has a whole learning module up for K through 12 teachers that they can plug and play into their classrooms using some of the snippets of the lives well lived film, and a whole you know, curriculum of how they can Cal students can connect with older adults. And the more that we do that the better the world is going to be. So I'm really pleased with where things have gone.Ray Loewe04:33So So let's back up a little bit because I think it started with this film  that's what allowed your passions to escape into the world. Okay. I know from the last interview that we did with you, I got one really strong thing from you. And that let me quote you on this and maybe it's not an exact quote, so you can correct me but basically, you said most of us like to believe that the human race has come a long way over the past century. And in one respect it has, but in another respect, what we've missed over the last 100 years is we're not talking to our older generation and capturing their wisdom and their values. And you know, when you did your film, and by the way, if you haven't seen Sky's, film, you need to do this. It's not a real long film, and you just not need to see it, because it will lay out for you. Not just through Sky and her vision through the camera, but through the lives of other people that believe in living life. And we need to start to capture this wisdom from people. So I remember, well, let's go back and talk about the film because it was successful. It was aired on PBS, it's still there. It's in all of these other places. But one of the other things that happened if I remember right, is you got hit with this, the film was released in the middle of COVID.Sky Bergman06:04Yeah, it well, we had our theatrical release before COVID. But then we were doing our community and educational screenings right in the midst of COVID. And what was wonderful was that we were ready to do virtual screenings and have virtual q&a. And in fact, I think that COVID, because of the issues that were facing older adults, and because of you know, that was certainly in the news that COVID was really affecting older adults, that's primarily really the biggest, I guess, group that were being affected in was the older adults. And so it became an issue that was to the forefront, like, let's talk about the stories of these older adults and the people that were losing and what that means and that generation. And so really, you know, the world became very flat during COVID. And people were very willing to do and meet through Zoom through Google meets and online and a way that didn't happen as much before. So I was busier than ever. And then I had been working already doing intergenerational projects, with universities and high schools and older adults, either senior centers or assisted living facilities, and was lucky enough that I had a colleague at Cal Poly, who Sarah Bartlett, who was teaches the psychology of aging class. And we've been doing this projects together for over a year at that point. And we pivoted very quickly to do it online. So we work with Senior Planet, which is part of AARP, and made it happen made these connections happen, even though everybody was shut-in. And it was probably more important than ever, because, of course, the two groups that were the loneliest during the pandemic, were older adults and students. And so we brought those two groups together. And what a gift that was for both groups of people.Ray Loewe07:54Yeah. And it allows you to be international all of a sudden without getting on airplanes, right?Sky Bergman08:00Yeah. Which is pretty nice, especially these days of their travel.Ray Loewe08:03Yeah. Now, if we go back to our last discussion a little bit, one of the highlights that I picked up again, you were talking about one of your students, James, and I think I'd like you to talk about it again if you're willing to do that because it has to do with how do you talk to our elders? SoSky Bergman08:24Sure, yeah, well, so when I would, when I would interview the people for the film because I'm a teacher, I would always try and take a student with me more just to kind of learn from that experience. And I had this one, student assistant, his name was James, really sweet young man. And we interviewed two people in one day. One of them was Lucky Willie, for those of you that haven't seen the film Lucky Willie is vivacious. He makes he was a practicing pediatrician for 50 years in this town, and then made Mr. Ellis for his daughter's deli fresh rolls every morning, and really amazing guy. So we went over there and interviewed him. And,  of course, he just is so funny. And we were laughing. We had a great time. And James and I went out to lunch afterwards. And James said to me, in all seriousness, wow, I didn't realize that older people could talk so much, you know, just kind of struck me because like I said, I grew up with my grandparents. And of course, they can talk a lot if you listen. And, and I said to him, Well, James, Don't you have anyone in your life? There's an older adult, and he said, Well, I have a grandfather, but you know, we really, he doesn't live near me. And we don't see him that much. And we don't really talk and it just so happened that it was right before Thanksgiving, and he was getting ready to go home. And of course, the whole family was gathering including his grandfather. And I said to him, James, your homework assignment because he was still my student at the time. Your homework assignment is I want you to take these questions that we just asked like Lucky Willie, and I want you to ask those questions of your grandfather. And it was so wonderful, he came back from that trip, grinning from ear to ear. And it was, you know, he didn't know how to open up that dialogue with his grandfather same thing his grandfather didn't really know how to how to communicate. But having a framework of those questions, it was so wonderful. And it allowed them both to open up and have a relationship that they really never had before. And so that's one of the things that we do when we do these intergenerational projects is we give the students and the older adults a framework of questions to start from, and then where they go off from there, and what tangents they go on is fine. But I think, in doing that, what you realize is that, you know, all the students will say, and the older adults are, they have far more in common than their differences, and the only differences really their age. And I think that like with any stereotype or any ism, you know, you can have that stereotype or that ism until you meet somebody from that other group. And then once you have a friend in that other group, those stereotypes and those isms start disappearing. So I feel like in many ways, what we're doing with these intergenerational projects is really combating the stereotypes of ageism, one story in one connection at a time, and ageism works in both directions. There are older people that have stereotypes about young people and vice versa. So it's really lovely to break down those barriers and to bring those two groups together,Ray Loewe11:18ya know, do you have those questions on a website or something like that, or some of them so that people can get started and having conversations?Sky Bergman11:26Absolutely, there is a place on our website that's called shared stories. And I should say, our website is lives-well-lived.com. Or if you just Google lives well lived, it'll be the first thing that comes up. And there's a place where people could actually share their stories. And the questions are there because I realized I had to stop interviewing people at 40. Or I would never have gotten the film done, how I wanted to be inclusive, and continue collecting people's stories. There's also if you go to the take action part of the website, there's some information about the intergenerational work that we're doing and a discussion guide for the film. And in that discussion guide, there are the questions as well.Ray Loewe12:01Okay, so let's talk about this new project because this is where your passions are going now, are you going to make another film first?Sky Bergman12:10Well, I do have an idea for another film because I love the intergenerational connection. So I did make a short film, which I'm trying to make into a half an hour film, hopefully for PBS as well, which is called mochi suki. And it's the tradition of that Japanese have of making mochi to bring in the new year. And I love there's a family here actually Suzie, who's in my film, her family gets together every year. And they make Mochi. And it's like 150 people, all different generations. And I love that idea of tradition, stories, and food all coming together those things are so wonderful. So that might be the beginning of a new series where I talk about different foods and different cultures and how they come generations come together through that. But of course, I'm still working on, you know, doing these intergenerational connections through the Lives Well Lived film. And now I'm writing a book, which will kind of be a companion guide to the film, and also talk about how you can bring these intergenerational projects to your Community Corporation educational institution. So that's, that's keeping me pretty busy these days.Ray Loewe13:15Okay, so let's take a minute and kind of define for us what this intergenerational project is. I mean, that's, that's a big word. And I have no idea what the context is. So kind of, you know, set set a stage, what are we talking about?Sky Bergman13:30Sure. I mean, there's lots of different intergenerational connections and projects that happen. The one that we've been doing with the film, is that we show the film to a group of older adults into students so that they can view it together. And then we have kind of a discussion afterward with that group of students and older adults. And it sets a framework of, first of all, the older adults think, wow, this could be interesting to tell my story. And the students think, wow, this can be interesting to find out about the story of these older adults. Because in the film, you see people that are at a younger age, and you see them throughout their lifetime in their history. And I think that that really helps to put it into some context. And then the students and older adults are given the questions that I used, I had 20 questions that I asked everyone in the film as a starting point. So they're given those questions to use to get to know each other, they meet three or four times during a period of either a quarter or semester, depending on the educational institution. And then at the end, there's a big wrap party where the students talk about what they learned the older adults too, do as well, but the students really have to put together kind of like a memoir and something to give to the older adults. So it's a big wrap party at the end. And it's just been such a wonderful project. I mean, I would say that there are a number of students and older adults that stay in touch after this project. In fact, I just heard from one of the older adults that a student who had just graduated reached out to her and said, wow, you have no idea just graduated from college. You have no idea what an impact this project had on me and my career and let's stay in touch. You know, that's so heartwarming to know. Because we as teachers don't always hear that so it's nice when we find out that these things keep happening and that those relationships last beyond just the confines of a classroom or the time that's satisfied.Ray Loewe15:10Yeah. Now you had the opportunity to interview your own parents or your father as part of the film, too. And,  why don't you tell us what you want to tell us about that?Sky Bergman15:20Yeah, well, so my dad recently passed away, as Ray knows that he had a massive stroke. And he was a practicing geriatric physician, right up until the day before he had a stroke. He was 79, almost 80. And, you know, it was great to interview him, because one of the questions that I asked everyone is, what do you think about your own mortality? And I think, as a daughter, it would have been a little bit, I would have felt a little awkward asking that question. I think in this society, we really don't talk about death or dying or mortality. But in the context of being an interviewer, it felt natural to just ask that question. And, honestly, my dad, and I had one of the best conversations that we've ever had. And when he did have a stroke, and things were happening, rapid-fire, I knew what his wishes were, and it made it much easier to go through that moment in time. And I think what a gift it was to both of us, that we have that conversation, and that his wishes were very clear. And, you know, I knew what was happening was okay, and it just, I think, the more that we can have these conversations, and the more that we can ask people questions, the better. And one of the questions I asked everyone was, do you have any regrets? And the biggest regret that people had, was not asking somebody a question who had passed away. So don't wait, because we think we have all this time and it can be gone in a fleeting second, I feel so grateful that I have that interview with my dad. It's just, you know, precious.Ray Loewe16:42Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Because I know it's an emotional issue. But I think it's so important because we don't talk to our parents especially. And, I regret, I never knew my grandparents, I never talked to them, I, I didn't even spend the time with my own parents to really find out who they are. And they're not here anymore. And I can't do that. So I think the importance of the work that you're doing about talking to other people is just so so important, and especially with your family. So again, thanks for sharing, any other comments that you want to make about the work that you're doing and where you're going, and what you hope to achieve?Sky Bergman17:22Well, I would just say to everyone out there, most importantly, everyone has a story to tell if we take the time to listen, we are so often on our devices, and not paying attention to each other and just put the devices away and really listen and talk to your loved ones. Talk to people, you know, reach out to people of different generations, make those things happen. I think that that's so vitally important. And if anyone is interested in reaching out to me and finding out how they can do a screening, or set up an intergenerational project, my email is [email protected], or you can find me on the website. Again, that's lives-well-lived.com. And, you know, very accessible and very willing to help and, and look for my book, which I hope will come out in May of next year. Maybe you'll have me back on when the book comes out. We'll do something made for Older Americans Month in 2023.Ray Loewe18:17And thanks so much for sharing because this is so important. And one of the things we don't do is we don't talk to people. So thanks again for sharing. Thanks again for being with us. And Sky, thanks again for being one of the luckiest people in the world. Because you certainly are following your passion. And you certainly have found a way to make it happen, haven't you?Sky Bergman18:38Absolutely. And I would say to anyone, you know, follow your passion. And also when you're working on a project and more personal the word universal, who would have thought that something that started out of a love of my grandmother would end up on PBS. And so you know, don't let those voices in your mind when you're working on a project. Go for it. Just go for it. You never know where it will take youRay Loewe19:00and thanks so much for being with us. And we'll see you again when the book comes out guaranteed. All right, have a great day. And thanks everybody for being with us and Luke signing off.Outro  19:12Thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world. 

Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host, Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Patrick Reynolds  00:11Good morning, everybody, and welcome to changing the rules and we have an incredible guest with us today. But before we let him on the air, I want to give you a little background, you know, we try every week to interview one of the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world are those people who don't let everybody else control their lives, they figure out what they want, and they somehow figure a way to go do it. And you're gonna see how our guest meets those specs today. And the other thing I wanted to comment on is the name of our show is changing the rules. And the reason for that is all through our lives were given rules by everybody. Okay? When you start, your parents give you a set of rules. And then the schools give you a set of rules, and the Church gives you a set of rules and your boss gives you a set of rules. Before you know it, you got so many rules. And What rules do is two things. They tell you have to do this, or you can't do this. So the people who are independent and who become the luckiest people in the world have found a great way of changing the rules so that they get the freedom to be themselves. And today we have with us a young man, Patrick Reynolds, who is I think the best way to describe him is a historical cartoonist. So Patrick, say hello. And you can tell me that I was wrong and how he described you.  Oh, hello, Ray.  That's kind of accurate. I have a cartoonist that does historical subjects of places or people that you've never heard of. Or if you're familiar with them, something about them that's never known.Ray Loewe02:01So you found the interesting way of doing things. So you weren't always free to be you though. Warrior. Correct. So let's go back a little bit. When you are early in your life, you realize you had this flair for cartooning? Is that correct? Right. When I was a kid, and you developed it and when you had a chance to go to college or trade school, or whatever it is. You went to learn how to be a better cartoonist first.Patrick Reynolds  02:27I wanted to be an artist. And my hobby was artwork, okay. It would be great if I can make a living out of my hobby. So I made that decision to be an artist and I had a mentor, if you will in my hometown, who was a very accomplished artist, and I asked what's the best art school in our country? I can go to what I'm missing a beat. He says Pratt Institute, little known to me that is in the middle of Brooklyn, New York right next to the Bet Sty neighborhood. Okay. But you got through that you live through the experience. Okay, so, so early in your life. Okay. When you came out of Pratt, what did you do? I became an art director for an advertising agency in Scranton. It was sort of like getting my master's degree if you will. There's the whole thing. We can't hire you unless you have experience. So how can I get experienced? So this was it. So I stayed there a year and then I became an art director at an ad agency in Harrisburg. And I worked there for a year and then finally, the draft board caught up with me and says, you're not getting any more deferments. You have two months to make a decision. Otherwise, we will draft you. So I went in the army.Ray Loewe03:49Okay. And interesting. You were in intelligence in the army. Correct, Right. And it tells you something about cartoonists, doesn't it? And, you did some really interesting things. You did some aerial surveillance, and, you know, make a long story short, I understand you want up to the Bronze Star. I understand you left the Army Reserves as a retired Lieutenant Colonel. Right. Right. So this was a big part of your life. And I know you were telling me some stories when we were kind of prepping for this about how you actually wound up doing some drawing while you were doing this stuff. And, putting Mickey Mouse's on the flags just to keep yourself entertained and stuff like that. But rather than spending time there, I want to go on because I think the rest of your career was just absolutely phenomenal. I don't want to spend the time there. So  you left the army. Right, and what did you do?Patrick Reynolds  04:45I got a job as an artist up in Schenectady for General Electric. I always want to say generous electric But General Electric. And that got me back on my feet in the art business. This. And from there, I became advertising manager of the host farm here in Lancaster. That's how I ended up in Lancaster.Ray Loewe05:08Okay, now I understand host farm is significant because you learned two things there that took over your career, right?Patrick Reynolds  05:16Oh, well really one thing from the my boss, I still have to make up the rate brochures to tell what it will cost to stay there for at a particular holiday. And I would add matchups and what's going to cost with the type of room. And then I would get it printed out and bring it to my boss, the manager. And he'd look at it. And he'd say, I want price to visit idiot-proof. idiot-proof, what are you talking about? He says, I want it so that any idiot can look at this and not have any questions, they'll understand everything you're trying to tell them. And that became one of the keys to my writing style. Okay. And there was something else that came out of there a while ago, I'm not going to match it up correctly. But it had to do something you didn't know, oh, I worked for the after I worked for host farm, I got a job as the public relations Information Specialist for the state tourism bureau where we promoted tours around the country. And I would look at what other states are doing. And I figured I want to do what they're not doing. And 1973-74 Halloween time. And I came up with a concept of, of a tour of haunted places in the state of haunted places you can visit. And the story got picked up by the New York Daily News front page of their travel section. And a couple of months later, I met the editor of the Travel section. I said what did I do, right? And he says, you told me something I didn't know. So when I came up with my cartoons, I decided to do with a one on Pennsylvania. And it would consist of stories from history that people never heard of, or even thought about.Ray Loewe07:17So here we are, we're doing something we didn't know. And the cartoons gave you a medium to make them idiot-proof. Right? Well, welcome to your own world, Patrick. So this led you on a career so so go back. And there was a point in time when you took off on your own because I think you got fed up with the bureaucracy. And you had this creativity that you wanted to run but I think you told me a story of that dealt with the bicentennial. And taking off to Boston and seeing something about Yankee something or other in the newspaper. So amplifying in that.Patrick Reynolds  07:57I was a member of the Society of America travel writers. And we had our convention in 1975 in several cities, and one of the first one was Boston. And on Sunday morning, right after the that previous Saturday night, I was in my hotel room and I watched this TV show you just came on Saturday Night Live 1975. Anyway, the next morning, I pick up the Boston Globe, and they had a cartoon, it was on their front page called Yankee almanac. It was a whimsical treatment of Massachusetts Bay Colony history for back in the 1600.  And I said that is the coolest idea ever seen, I could do something like that for Pennsylvania. And at the time I was bucking for promotion to be our director of my bureau. At the time, I had delusions of grandeur. And so I did three of them. And one of them had to do with the July 3 and three significant events and PA and places that you would visit such as Gettysburg. Another one was on the mammoth fossil found in Pennsylvania, which is on display at the State Museum, on and on. So I did these three gave them to the higher up and didn't hear from them. And then what they did was they hired a guy from Virginia for the job that I wanted. And I thought I'm not long for this job. So he came to me and said, the powers that be were impressed by your comic strips, how long is it going to take to do one of them things? I said to myself, I'm not going to give this to the state. I'm keeping this for me. So I said four days a week, you know, wow, that's a lot to do. I said, Look, you're the boss. I'm going to do what you direct me to do and what you want done, I said but I'd like to do this on my own time. Therefore, I'd like you to get a letter of understanding from the powers that be that I can do this on my own time and sell it to the newspapers. And next day come back with a letter of understanding. And that's how it started. For there, I marketed to all the newspapers, I can in the state, I ended up getting picked up by 20 newspapers. But none of them were in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, one of these papers now became a Pittsburgh paper. But that was long, many long years later. So I did that for a couple of years. But still, I got I had time. Oh, after that cartoon started, it took me two years to leave my state job, because I came out with books on it. And the books sold fantastically, which I printed myself, by the way. And so after two years, I forgot I could make this on my own. So now you emerge as one of the luckiest people in the world. Right? Exactly. Because now you're doing your passion. Right. And there are two passions that I detect. One is cartooning. And the other is these historic events that you pick up. And you can make come to life for people, right? As if you're there. And you could do this and figure out how to get paid for it without putting up with the bureaucracy of the state of Pennsylvania, or somewhere. Exactly. Great. All right. So now we know why you were dealing with the luckiest people in the world. So over the years, what are some of the best topics that you uncovered? You mentioned the haunted houses, but what are some of the other ones that you found fascinating that you were able to turn into comics so that everybody could understand they were idiot-proof? And we tell people something new? Right, right. Well, sometimes I try to tie them in with a current event. For example, January 6, last year, the raid on the US Capitol, I got an idea of a different type of a mass gathering in Washington, one of the first ones and that was the Bonus Army that took place in 1932. What the bonus was, was Congress passed an act in 1924. That gave a bonus to every soldier that served in World War One. And that bonus was going to be paid in 1946. So at the time, in the 1920s, people were making a living, it was a great time. And then the Depression hit. Now, half these veterans, several million of them are destitute, their farms are being repossessed by the banks. So Washington had to do something. We need that money now not 1946. So Wright Patman from Texas voted in favor of it, but no one went along with it. The House passed, the Senate wouldn't. So a couple of guys, one guy in particular in Oregon, decided to march on Washington. So how are they gonna get that had no money. So what they did was they hitchhiked or they hop on freight trains. And they got as far as and this made the news. So other veterans from the rest of the country said we're gonna do the same thing. So they started hitchhiking and train hopping, trying all converging on Washington, DC, eventually, 20,000 veterans showed up and waited for the pressured Congress to and they're very organized, by the way, since these are military. And we're gonna stay. The chief of police got them to stay in some of the abandoned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue because PA Avenue was being rebuilt. So what it looks like today. So where do you find this stuff? I read a lot. Okay, read a whole lot. And by the way, I've been doing this long before the way hadn't Google and stuff like that. Okay, so give me another example. So that's something I didn't know. Okay. And I think I understand it. So give me something else. Well, I got I gotta tell you the kicker on the Bonus Army, okay. They Congress voted against it. And it was dead. So half the veterans left DC the other half stayed there. And most a lot of them settled in in camps, and Anacostia, which is across the Anacostia River, and, and several many 1000s were there and he built their own shacks. Some of them lived out of their own jalopy cars. And when they refused to leave, President Hoover gave the word to his Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur to get rid of them, and General MacArthur along with his, Adjutant Major Dwight Eisenhower, when it's action, and they organize the two troops of squadrons of cavalry, and a one, two battalions of infantry to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and just kick everybody out. The infantry carried tear gas. The cavalry carried sabers. Commanding one of the squadrons was Captain George Patton. They eradicated everybody and he ended up burning all or setting fire to all the stuff at Anacostia. So it ended in a disaster. And when this hits the news, Franklin Roosevelt in his home in Hyde Park was the Democratic candidate for president that year. He just sat there told his aide, we don't have to campaign anymore. Wow, just lost it. Wow. So this is the core kind of story that you tried to tell in your publications. Is that right? Right, right. Okay. So, unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time, and I want to hit something because you're kind of at the end of your publication experience. You told me you're going to retire. I don't believe that. But we'll assume that you're correct for the moment. What are you going to do and writing about your life and your history? And you I think you said that we're for events, you're gonna have to give us a short version here. But go ahead.  My editors asked me the question, are you gonna do a special goodbye, and I says, Look, I not only write history, but I've lived through force. I consider four significant events in American history. The first one, I was a senior at Pratt, I was given a freelance job to help this woman in her business. Her name was Melee Dufty, a renowned civil rights leader, who owned a booking company for burlesque acts in black burlesque theaters across the country. And she needed someone to work on her book, which is a page-by-page bio of each person, I had to do the lettering on it. So I can free her up so she can make phone calls all over the country to bus companies. And these bus companies were gonna meet at churches, black churches throughout the country, and carry people to Washington DC for the 1963 march on Washington. At one point, I asked her the dumbest question in my life. I said, Do you think you're gonna get many people to show up? She says you'll see. And that summer 1000s I think over a million people showed up to listen to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. Then during when I was in the Army active duty to participate in the Tet offensive of 1968. As a reservist in the army, I was activated to my company was activated that I commanded to take part in the rescue mission of from Agnes, the Agnes flood that day to Pennsylvania. And the last one was after the TMI accidents. I got a phone call from the public relations director of TMI. That's Three Mile Island Right Three Mile Island, the nuclear plants. And the what happened was the nuke the core of the one reactor virtually melted. And he called me and he says, are you comfortable with coming onto TMI? I said are you going to pay me? I'll be there. The job I had was to interpret engineer schematics, which I had experience in before, and making them into illustrations of these tools that they're going to use to break apart the core, and then pick up the pieces. I did maybe a dozen of these things. And they made a video out of it. And they never used the video because they've decided not to go into the core at all. So there's the fourth TMI accident.Ray Loewe19:21Okay, so amazing. Okay. And, you know, all I can say is welcome to the world of the luckiest people in the world. You're there, okay? We're going to have to do an encore to this because I just see the list of stories here. You can go on and on and on forever, probably. And I think the lesson that we hope people learn is, you know when you get frustrated in your career, you know, think find that key, find how you can use your passion and go off and become one of the luckiest people in the world. And, Patrick, thanks so much for being here. And Luke, sign us off and we'll see everybody next week. weekOutro  20:03thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Dr. Mike Stierstorfer Website:  podcast.stopmyibs.com Transcription:Intro00:02Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Good morning, everybody. And welcome to changing the rules. Changing the rules is a weekly podcast where every week we try and highlight what we think is one of the luckiest people in the world. So the luckiest people in the world are people who redesign their own lives, under their own terms and live them the way they want. And they're usually people who think outside of the box when they address problems and issues. And they don't, they're not constrained to the rules of life. You know, one of the things that we find is that all through our lives were given rules that we're supposed to live with. And we're given them by our parents, and then by the schools. And sometimes we get saddled with so many rules that they become barriers to doing what we want to do and what we need to do. And we have with us today, one of the luckiest people in the world, and you're gonna see that he just attacks problems in an entirely different way. He doesn't let himself be constrained by the norms. And because of that, he has successes that other people don't have. So, Mike, Mike Stierstorfer did I pronounce that right today, Mike? You did. That's amazing in itself. Okay. But welcome to changing the rules. And let me give people a little background on you. I found out something unusual. I live in a little town called Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And I asked Mike if he had heard about it. Then he said, Well, I have to go to school there. He went to Franklin and Marshall. So he knows more about this place than I do. And then he went from there on to Temple to get his MD and set up his own practice as a dermatologist, which is really interesting, because of the work he's doing is an entirely different area. And he's been on the staff at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for a long time teaching interns, teaching residents, is that correct? Mike? Dermatology residents? Yes. Okay, so so he's got incredibly great credentials for what he's doing. And so let's start off, Mike with an event that occurred, I think, was on July 3, 2008.Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  02:39That was the exact day that it happened. And I remember it so well because it was a beautiful day, the day before Fourth of July. And I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. And within an hour or so after lunch, I started getting an upset stomach, some nausea, and belly pain. And I assumed it was from something I had just eaten and that it would go away by the next day like things usually do. Turns out those same symptoms persisted for the better part of the following year, accompanied by some other symptoms that pretty much qualified for criteria that are used to diagnose irritable bowel syndrome. And that's where everything started. That day, I remember it well, because that night I was walking around, everybody's having a nice time and I'm walking around with an upset stomach, not too happy that I was missing out on all the fun.Ray Loewe03:35Okay, so let's take a minute and talk about this thing called irritable bowel syndrome. It's not it's not something we enjoy talking about on the air. But it is a problem that many, many, many people have, and is not easily diagnosed and solved. So give us a little bit of the background and then we're gonna go into some of the unique solutions that you've been able to come up with.Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  04:01Yes, so irritable bowel syndrome is extremely common. It affects 10 to 15% of Americans or 30 to 45 million Americans. And over 50% of those people with IBS report that foods aggravate their symptoms. It's been felt to be what's called a functional disorder. In other words, one of the in which there's nothing physically wrong. There are several criteria that make up the diagnosis of IBS. You have to have belly pain at least once a week for the past three months, once at least six months prior to that. And it needs to be accompanied by things like onset of the symptoms being associated with changing the way your stool looks either looser or harder. Also, or accompanied by the pain getting better or worse with a bowel movement and also, the bowels moving more or less frequently. Um, upon onset of the symptoms, so there's very strict criteria that are used to make the diagnosis.Ray Loewe05:06Okay? And the cure for this is a traditional process is you go to a gastroenterologist, and they have a process for diagnosing this, which is not necessarily the most pleasant thing in the world to go through right?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  05:20Yeah, they pretty much want to rule out other things that could have a more detrimental long-term consequence to your health. They want to rule out things like inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, things like that even colon cancer. So they want to make sure you don't have that. And sometimes they can do that just clinically by asking you questions and examining you. But often these people go through a lot of testing with various types of scopes, and blood tests and radiographic tests, even CAT scan. So there's a lot often that goes into the evaluation before they come to the conclusion it's just IBS. I shouldn't say just IBS, because it can be a serious problem, too. Yeah.Ray Loewe06:04So so here you are in an entirely different field. Okay. And unfortunately, you're having these symptoms. So what happened here? What did you do you know, what's the new way you look at this thing?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  06:21So for the better part of the year, I had these symptoms, I had the big evaluation that didn't find anything. And finally, about a year later, I was trying to determine whether foods are playing a role I avoided gluten, I avoided lactose things that are known to cause GI issues. Nothing helped about a year into it, I got a lucky break, really, I ate Indian dinners at the same restaurants twice within a week of one another. And both times, my symptoms flared up severely worse than normal, but they're the same kind of symptoms I was usually getting. So I knew it was something in the food I was eating for the first time. And I knew it wasn't the Indian spices because I in general, don't eat them that often. And I was having these symptoms, on average, probably half the days. So the thing that I thought about because it's in pretty much everything we eat unless we're intentionally trying to avoid it was garlic. So I just stopped eating garlic. And literally the next day, my symptoms were completely gone. At that point, I felt that this had to be a new allergy to garlic because you can become allergic to something at any point in time, it doesn't have to be something new, repeat exposure, you could come allergic to it. So I set out to try to determine what type of allergy this was. I didn't really know much about IBS, I wasn't really interested in GI as a medical student, I'm a dermatologist. So I first tried a blood test that would look for a peanut type allergy, which everybody's pretty familiar with. And that test was negative for garlic. That's the same kind of test that the allergist says with a prick and scratch test. So that's called a type one allergy, that was negative, I still was convinced it was an allergy. And in Dermatology, we do a type of allergy test called a patch test, frequently for people who have a rash called eczema and we suspect that their Eczema is being caused by something that's touching their skin, in other words, an allergic reaction causing their eczema type of rash. So that's a different type of allergy than the peanut allergy completely different. It's called a type four allergy skin kind of allergy just causes poison ivy, and I decided to do a patch test on myself to garlic. And the patch test was positive I got a red itchy spot on my skin after leaving the garlic there for two days. So my thought at that point was likely the same type of inflammation I was getting in the skin from the patch test from the garlic was occurring in the lining of the intestine when I ate any foods containing garlic. So another point I should mention is that until the early 2000s IBS was felt to be something where there was nothing physically wrong. But in the early 2000s, inflammation has been identified and a lot of people with IBS, both with biopsies of the intestine and with blood tests that show that there's inflammation going on in the body. So most of the time though this inflammation, they don't know what's causing it. So my thought was likely this allergic reaction caused by the garlic in the intestine was causing inflammation causing the IBS symptoms. At that point, I wanted to figure I wanted to find out who else had looked into this. So I googled it and I found that no one ever investigated patch testing the foods for irritable bowel syndrome. So that's when I started with the research on it. I've done several clinical trials now that have been published. And the conclusion of these studies was that by identifying specific foods not just garlic-like but because to overwhelm 80 things now was in the studies up to 117 or 120 Different foods, that over 50% of people we test get either moderate or great improvement in their IBS symptoms by limiting the foods that they identify are identified by the patch testing. So this was completely new information. If you ask the gastroenterologist about food allergies, and IBS, they say they don't play a role. And the reason for that is that it's been taught to them because of other studies that have looked at type one food allergies. And there's another type of allergy called a type three allergy to but those types of testing are not helpful for IBS. So it's ingrained into gastroenterologists that food allergies don't play a role with IBS type four allergy testing by patch testing had never been done for IBS before. So essentially, those prior studies looking at the other types of allergies were like, barking up the wrong tree looking for the wrong type of allergy, you wouldn't be able to check my garlic allergy by doing a type one allergy test.Ray Loewe11:06Okay, so now we have a whole new series of ways to investigate a problem that people had. Now there. First of all, let's talk a little bit about your successes here. So you are telling me when we did our prep call about an 11-year-old girl that you had some success with. And once you go through that particular description, and let's find out what happened.Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  11:35This was one of the most gratifying experiences I had using this testing. This girl was missing school two or three days a week. And her mom somehow learned about this testing that I was doing. And later, she mentioned that she didn't really think it was going to help but she thought I tried she tried anyway, because it was such a desperate situation. And this girl was allergic to benzoyl peroxide, which is used to bleach flour and some cheeses. And she was also allergic to something called pining alpha, which is a naturally occurring chemical that's found in parsley, carrots, parsnips, and celery. So these allergies were identified, she went on to eliminate those foods from her diet and she's 100% Better, she hasn't missed a day of school. And her mom said that when the girl gets sick, she would make her vegetable soup with all those vegetables. And she said I was poisoning my daughter. So yeah, this is an example where like, for me, it was, I was lucky because it was garlic. It was something I could figure out by the process of elimination just from what I had eaten and what I knew I didn't eat that often. But something like pining alpha, you would never be able to figure that out just by the like elimination diet or process of elimination. So this is where the patch testing really becomes useful.Ray Loewe13:01Okay, so so we have uncovered largely by chance, because you were the patient, right? You had a series of issues, and you wanted to solve them for yourself. So how does this figure it out into where the medical community is going with taking care of IBS?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  13:23Well, this is really very early. We're just trying to get the message out there to doctors and to patients about this. That's not an easy task. The goal is that eventually, we hope that the first thing that we've done with people with IBS is this patch testing before subjecting them to all these invasive procedures and radiographic studies where they get radiation and not to mention the cost of those procedures and then putting them on all these different medications that may or may not help at some are quite expensive. Some of them are up to $1,000 a month. So we feel that this testing should be a first-line option for patients with IBS. It's a very simple solution, it identifies specific foods, it's much easier to typically avoid foods found here than doing something like the low FODMAP which is a popular diet for people with IBS, which is very difficult to fall involve lots of different foods here with the patch so you can avoid one or two specific foods or three or four whatever we find and potentially get better. So the goal is that this will be a first-line option for people with IBS and save them a lot of aggravation, testing, and treatments that don't work and expense that goes along with it.Ray Loewe14:43and this isn't stuff that has to go through FDA approval and stuff because the tests are, are approved. It's just a question of getting the medical community to look at this as an option for treating and cure, right?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  14:57So the tests are done with what are called compounded allergens and compounded. And these are considered medications by the FDA So, but because they're compounded, there are a set of guidelines using compounded medications for patients where they don't actually have FDA approval, they have to be prescribed for a specific patient and a patient's name. And they have to the manufacturing of these allergens has to be done by a licensed compounding pharmacist following what are called USP guidelines. So it's accessible to properly licensed doctors and other providers now, as long as they do it in a specific patient's name.Ray Loewe15:41Yeah. And what percentage, you know, IBS is caused by a whole lot of things, right. But when you look at the kinds of things that you're trying to address here is do you have any idea of what percentage of the IBS community or what communities are the wrong word, but,the problems that can be fixed by this?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  16:04Well, yeah, you're right. IBS probably is caused by a lot of different things. But our studies have shown that a significant percentage of these people have these food allergies. In my studies, within the patients who have long-term follow-up, were getting an eight to 10 improvement on a scale from zero to 10, of about a third of the patients and moderate improvement or five to seven on a scale of 10 and another 25%. So I don't know the exact number, but I would venture to guess that probably at least 25%, if not higher than that conservatively, have food allergies that are contributing are completely causing their symptoms.Ray Loewe16:43Well, cool. You know, we're unfortunately, we're near the end of our time already. And I find it fascinating to talk to people like you because you think outside the box. And that's why you are one of the luckiest people in the world. You're not constrained to normal things. You know, you're thinking outside the box, and you're making progress. So where are you going to go from here? What's the next step?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  17:08Well, I do, I do want to just follow up on that comment, right. And I do feel in a lot of ways that I have been extremely lucky to make this discovery really was a very lucky setup circumstance, I pretty much followed my nose. This was not an epiphany that I came up with. But it involves a lot of luck. To make the discovery IBS has been described since 1944. And no one ever before recognize this connection between this type of allergy type four food allergy detectable by patch testing and IBS symptoms. So the luck involved. The fact that first of all, I developed irritable bowel syndrome, some people may call it bad luck, but in a lot of ways, for many people with IBS, it was very good luck. And even for me that I was able to find something that relieve my symptoms. Also, it was lucky that it happened to be garlic and that I ate those two Indian dinners within a week of one another was able to make the connection to garlic was also lucky that I was a dermatologist and I had the tools and the knowledge and the resources to pursue this further. And was also lucky that it turned out to be a type of allergy that in Dermatology we deal with all the time, like for allergies, for allergic contact dermatitis. So there was a perfect storm of circumstances that created this lot that involve that enabled me to make this what I feel is a significant discovery in medicine.Ray Loewe18:35Yeah, but it takes some knowledge and it takes some effort and it takes some you got to follow the luck. Otherwise, the luck never materializes. So, you know, thank you so much for being with us. If people want more information, where can they go to find out more about you and more about what you're doing? And we'll post this, by the way in the notes on our podcast, so they'll be able to see it. But where do they go?Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  19:01Thank you. There's a URL. It's podcast.stopmyibs.com. And patients will be able to get and doctors get a lot of information there. And if they have questions beyond that, our contact information is available there on the website. So we're very happy to talk to anybody who'd like to discuss this further.Ray Loewe19:24Oh, cool. Well, thank you so much for being with us. And continue your great work. And maybe we'll uh another six months or so we'll have you back again. And we'll find out what's happened and where the progress has been. So have a great day. And thanks so much for being with us.Dr. Mike Stierstorfer  19:41Thank you very much.Outro  19:45Thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world. 

Alexandra's Website:  https://lightenarrangements.com/ Transcription:00:03Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:18Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world today because we have a wonderful guest. We're going to welcome her in a minute to Changing the Rules. Let me remind everybody that through our lives, we are saddled with rules. They come from everywhere they come from our parents, they come from the schools, they come from the church, they come from jobs. The next thing you know, we have rules and rules tell us, you're allowed to do this, or you're not allowed to do that. So you don't get any freedom out of rules. So the luckiest people in the world are those people who have figured out how to choose from this set of rules that we've been put together and choose which ones work for them, and which ones maybe they want to get around. Every week, we feature one of the luckiest people in the world. We have one today and Alexandra Koys is one of the luckiest people in the world because she has designed her own life, and she's taking control of it. She's living it under her terms. So welcome to Changing the Rules, Alexandra.Alexandra Koys01:28Thank you. It's great to be here.Ray Loewe01:30You're out there in the sunny city of Chicago. Right?Alexandra Koys01:34That's right. Ray Loewe01:36So you have an incredibly interesting background. But it was rather mundane, in the early years, you were doing what you were supposed to do, weren't you?Alexandra Koys01:46That's right. So it was quite different from the entrepreneurship path that I'm on now. So I started off studying foreign service at Georgetown University in Washington DC, you know, more traditional path that I'm on now. Right out of college, worked for Deloitte Consulting, doing primarily government work for a couple of years. And after that, I kind of followed the path to Blue Cross Blue Shield. At the time, the Affordable Care Act was being implemented and there was a lot of regulatory and operational work to be done in healthcare. I liked the field and liked the work I was doing, so I made the transition from Deloitte to Blue Cross Blue Shield. As you can see, I was kind of someone who took things one step at a time, followed where the path led me, and where the opportunities that were open to me, went. Someone who was very comfortable working in large organizations, having a stable steady job, a predictable role. Someone who is comfortable operating as one piece in a very large puzzle. A couple of years ago, as you mentioned, I took control and sort of dove into the world of starting my own business. So that has been quite a change, but an exciting one.Ray Loewe03:16You had salaries before, and now you don't have salaries, right. But that was a clue here. See, when you studied foreign service, we knew maybe you didn't know, but we knew you're going to be a spy. We knew you're going to take off on your own, it was just a question of time. So we had an event that occurred. The interesting thing about the luckiest people in the world is usually they start in a mundane kind of a thing. And it's not that they hate where they are. It's just that there may be a "I'm not excited where they are". And then something happens and that event creates an opportunity. So tell us about that.Alexandra Koys03:58Yeah, I would love to. For me, the spark for making the switch was an experience I had that prompted me to start my business. My business is in the funeral services industry. Were in the business of creating celebrations of life and transforming the traditional somber funeral home, or somber funeral service into an uplifting celebration of life. The spark for doing that was my uncle passed away. It was about five years ago. He was the type of guy who was always the life of the party. So the traditional somber funeral environment didn't feel like the right place to gather for him. My family and I gathered in his favorite restaurant and we had more of a celebration of life. But that was a lot of planning to take on, while we were grieving. It occurred to me after that experience, I realized that there really weren't services out there for families who were looking for a non-traditional environment or experience to celebrate their loved one. So I created that service.Ray Loewe05:14Most people don't think about this, they don't plan. I've had two interesting events that kind of play on this. I was at a memorial service not too long ago, and it was a pastor of a church. He was a friend. He died over the age of 100. I didn't know this, but he had planned his own memorial service. He had decided which hymns were going to be played, he decided who was going to be the singers in the group, he decided on everything. It made it a whole lot easier for his kids because everything was thought out in advance. The second thing is, I live in a place right now, it's a senior citizen community. A lot of people are here because they wanted to make their health care choices so their kids didn't have to make them. It's a similar kind of thing. All of a sudden, somebody gets sick, and everybody's got to run around and figure out what to do with us? I find what you're doing amazing. I never really thought it through. It just makes sense to do this. Tell us a little bit about how you help people plan. Then tell us about some of the events that you've created and how you do that.Alexandra Koys06:36I would love to. I love that example that you gave about your friend who planned his own funeral, memorial celebration. Talk about taking charge of your life. That's really defining your legacy when you pre-plan for yourself and define how you want to be remembered. So I love that. That's exactly what we work with families to do. We help them curate and design their own celebration of life experiences unique to their life, their identity, and their values. So I'd love to give a few examples of things that we plan to help paint the picture of the variety of services that we help bring to life.Ray Loewe07:21Before we go there, go back a little bit. When you are doing planning, are you doing planning with the relatives of a deceased person? Are you doing planning with the people that haven't died yet, and are thinking ahead?Alexandra Koys07:34It could be either one, some families approach us after a loved one has passed away, and others approach us wanting to pre-plan for themselves.Ray Loewe07:43Okay. All right.Alexandra Koys07:46To give a little bit of background about what our offerings are I mentioned a little bit earlier. We're in the business of transforming the funeral into an uplifting celebration of life, and we help families gather in non-funeral home environment. We offer an array of packages that help people gather in parks, theaters, museums, and live music venues, and we help them curate a unique celebration and a unique ceremony that celebrates who they are; which is often a unique fusion of their personal identity, cultural identity, and spiritual identity. Some of the ways that we've done that in the past, and one that comes to mind from a recent service. We planned a celebration of life in a local history museum and this was for a woman who loved art, culture, and history. We created a museum exhibit focused on her life. We brought dozens of items from her home into that exhibit. Furniture, she painted journals that she wrote in, clothes she wore, pillows she sewn, photos from her life. Each item had a sign next to it just like you would experience in a museum gallery explaining the significance of that item in her life. Another example is we've held a number of ceremonies in local movie theaters. We like to say that these are for larger-than-life personalities fit for the big screen. The guests are sitting in theater seats instead of sitting in funeral home chairs. The speakers are at the front of the theater giving their remarks while photos and videos are playing on the giant movie screen behind them. We've also done outdoors celebrations of life for people who loved the outdoors or want to be surrounded by the peace or the beauty of nature to honor their life. Those have sometimes involved; balloon releases or waterside ceremonies. We've done some really beautiful things that really helped surface the unique elements of the person who passed; their identity, and how they or their family want to remember them.Ray Loewe10:08You have a wide range of things here. Somebody can plan this thing relatively inexpensively, and have a party in their backyard in a sense. Or I hate to even think what it might cost to rent out part of a museum to display all of your work, but I'm sure that I don't have the budget for that one. But some people do. Okay. Yeah. I think it's interesting because it's the final thing you do. Otherwise, you're remembered as a date on a gravestone, right? So here's a chance to go wild. How did this idea develop? Go back to the death of your uncle a little bit. I understand that your mother needed help and taking control? So you got involved much more than you normally would have? How did you envision what you wanted to do? What was kind of the brainstorming that went through?Alexandra Koys11:13I was really thinking about what would my uncle have wanted? What is the atmosphere he would have wanted? Who are the people he would have wanted around him? What are the hobbies, passions, interests, beliefs that he had, that he would want to be remembered by; because, the alternative, what a lot of us are used to thinking of a funeral is, dressing in black, standing in a funeral home room, standing in a line and talking in hushed tones, and that didn't feel right. For his memories, we wanted something that he would have enjoyed if he were there, and he would have been glad to be remembered by those things.Ray Loewe11:57There's two parts to this, there's the planning piece, where you got to sit down and visualize who this person was, and what's appropriate for them. Then you gotta go out and get the venue, and get the space, and set it up. Right?Alexandra Koys12:14That's right. For our particular offerings, we have some preset and pre-ready to go, venues that we work with regularly. If they feel right for a particular family's gathering, or sometimes we develop custom experiences for families that want to create something from the ground up.Ray Loewe12:36So if I were going to plan my own memorial service, what are the things that you would coach me to think about?Alexandra Koys12:46First, whether we're working directly with an individual, or whether we're working with their family. We always start off with an open-ended question, tell me about yourself, or tell me about your loved one. What comes to mind for different families is a little bit different. For some people, it's the love for their career. For some people, it's the love of their family. For some people, it's aspects of their personality that they want to bring into play, or it might be a hobby. Different families have different experiences or different elements of their loved one's identity that they want to surface. So we always start off by getting to know the person whose celebration it is so that we can then take those and curate experiences or create events that celebrate those unique aspects of their personality.Ray Loewe13:43Then once you get this planning done, and you figure out what this concept is going to be, then you got to start to put together the pieces. If you pre-plan this, how does one do this? They sit down with somebody like you, get the plan set now, who knows when we're gonna die? Hopefully, it's a long way away. What do you do to pre-fund these events? Do you not worry about the actual event, you just kind of leave the instructions and then dump all this on your kids? Or what do you do?Alexandra Koys14:18That can actually be done either way, when it comes to pre-planning, there are some people who choose to just complete the planning portion now and leave the actual implementation of the plans, and the payments of the plan, for when they do actually pass. As you mentioned that could be one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, none of us really knows. Or there are some people who do choose to pre-fund the plan so that they have that money set aside already. As you mentioned it doesn't have to be something that is a stress to the family members when someone does pass away,Ray Loewe15:04So you have a website, and people can go to this website, and you have all these examples of things that you've done. So what is the website for everybody?Alexandra Koys15:13It is lightenarrangements.com. At our site, as you mentioned, there are examples of both our in-person celebrations of life. And we also have examples of our virtual gatherings. So another interesting thing that we do is we also help families gather virtually, this was something that started during the COVID era. But we're still seeing even as things open up, a lot of families choosing to gather online for that ceremony and for that celebration, because so many people, so many families are spread out across the country, or even around the world. So virtual tends to be a way that those types of families can come together in community for healing and for celebrating their loved one's life. We also hear that virtual can sometimes be a more manageable planning and gathering experience for people who are juggling multiple things. I had one woman, one client say to me, I am trying to work a full-time job, be a mom to my kids, bereave my dad, and I need help with this. The idea of doing this virtually is something that feels more manageable to me than in person. So that's another example that you'll see on our site of services that we can offer.Ray Loewe16:44Now you've built this business already, you have eight people that work for you now. So you're doing this for lots of people. That's where we are now. I think it's a great thing for people to think about. What about the future? Where are you? Where are you going with all this? What's the dream, what's the plan, what's going to happen?Alexandra Koys17:05The dream is to create the next generation of the funeral industry and to make Lighten the gold standard for what it means to plan and hold a celebration of life for a loved one. There are two ways that we're doing that. One is awareness. Two is modernizing the planning experience on the awareness side; it's about educating families and raising awareness that the funeral home isn't the only option. If that doesn't feel right for you, and you're looking for something more uplifting, there are options for you. On the second side of things, we're modernizing the planning experience. We do that with a blend of personalized care and innovative technology. So we currently have an online planning portal that allows families to make arrangements from the comfort of their own homes at any time that's convenient for them. We also offer video conference consultations and planning sessions. So that families don't have to come to an in-person environment as the traditional industry is run, they can plan at the place, in the time that's convenient for them and still have the guidance that a professional planner can offer.Ray Loewe18:18Well, it's a very interesting way of looking at a phase of our life that we're all going to enter at some point in time. You're a perfect example of one of the luckiest people in the world. I think you've showed the enthusiasm of doing something you love to do,  something you're excited about doing. Thanks for being with us. Unfortunately, we're at the end of our time here. We're going to have to have Luke sign us off. But thanks again for being with us. And again, the name of your website isAlexandra Koys18:51lightenarrangements.comRay Loewe18:53People can get in touch with you through there, right?Alexandra Koys18:55That's correct. Our phone number for those who are phone friendly is 312-373-0847.Ray Loewe19:01Okay, thank you so much for being with us.Alexandra Koys19:04It was great to be here. Thank you.19:09Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcription:00:04Welcome to Changing The Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too! Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:18Good morning, everybody. We're here in our brand new studios in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. We're here with our engineer, Luke Cagno. If Luke weren't here, this thing wouldn't come off. We have a special guest today that we're going to introduce in a minute. But I want to take a minute before we start and remind you of why we're doing these podcasts. Every week, we try to interview one of what we think are the luckiest people in the world. Now, the luckiest people in the world are those people who have pretty much-taken control of their lives; they live them under their own rules, based on their own purpose and what they want to accomplish. When they do this, it allows them to live the way they want to live. They live more exciting and more fascinating lives. So we're showcasing somebody every week with a hope that maybe those of you who are struggling to find where that is for you. You'll find a role model here. And again, the name of our show is Changing The Rules. One of the things that we find is that the people who are the luckiest people in the world deal well with rules. You know, we're filled with rules, right? Our whole life. When we're born, our parents give us rules. Then the church gives us rules. Then the schools give us rules. And before you know it, we have all these rules that are trying to determine what it is that we do. It was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, that came up and said, 'if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life'. So there's a time when we have to sift and sort through these rules and decide which ones are going to be important and which ones are going to be the guiding principles for us. We have a young man here, I emphasize young, who has been all over the world, and who has certainly find out found out what's important to him. I want to introduce Phil Schwab. I met Phil actually in a swimming pool, believe it or not, and Phil is a fourth-generation missionary. So Phil, say hi to everybody. Tell us a little bit about being a fourth-generation missionary.Phil Schwab02:34Hello, everybody. My grandfather was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and taught a men's Bible class and did ministry for many, many years. Then my father after being in the Navy, just four years, he went to Japan with my mom. By then I was I was around. So the four of us, my younger brother, and I, and my mom and dad went to Japan in 1948. So I grew up there.Ray Loewe03:03So you were kind of preordained with where your life was going to go early, weren't you? You had you had a lot of direction. Phil Schwab03:04Yeah, that's right. Ray Loewe03:04Tell me a little bit about your early life in Japan. I think one of the things that you mentioned during our pre interview was that missionaries were very welcome to Japan after the end of the Second World War. So tell us a little bit about that, too.Phil Schwab03:32Well, the atmosphere in Japan had changed a lot after they lost the war to America. And it's like they were thinking, hey, you know, maybe the American God is stronger than the Emperor and all of our worship of Shinto and everything like that. So General MacArthur said to have made a request that 1000 missionaries come to Japan because the doors are wide open. So I think that's what you're referring to. A lot of people that were in the military, and fighting the Japanese, they had a heart to go and reach their enemies with the gospel. So that's my dad. That's what Dad and Mom did.Ray Loewe04:22So you were dragged along at this point, you're not old enough to make your own decisions, right? At age three. You were actually born in the United States?Phil Schwab04:31Yes.Ray Loewe04:32You're a US citizen that was born at a Naval Hospital. You moved to Japan. So I think obviously, Japanese is one of the languages that you speak.Phil Schwab04:43Well, I picked it up as a kid. I was three and for two or three years in the neighborhood, I played with Japanese kids. Then I taught English later when I was in high school, and it ended up that my students, who were university students, they taught me more Japanese and I taught English. Because I had to explain a lot in Japanese. So I picked up kind of a little grasp of Japanese, which I still have, but it's very informal and conversational. Ray Loewe05:11I bet you can get along pretty well over there if you have to. So the first 10 years, or maybe a little longer of your life, was living in Japan. One of the things that you mentioned is that you learn to love the Asian culture.Phil Schwab05:29Yeah, well, it's almost like wherever you grow up, you tend to appreciate your surroundings and so forth. Here I was, most of my time with Japanese people riding Japanese trains to go to school, it was an American school we went to, so I grew up knowing English. But surrounded by Japanese, and of course, Japanese are very serious people. Kissinger once said that the Japanese are people that have no sense of humor. It's a very serious society. So I almost grew up being very serious, but I somehow overcame. I appreciate having grown up in Asia.Ray Loewe06:11So this set a structure for where you're going to go in your life. We talked briefly about your choice of college and where you went to college. So what formulated all that?Phil Schwab06:28I was having to make a choice, of course, and I was offered a full scholarship to a liberal arts college. At the same time, I felt I should start preparing for the ministry because that was what was on my heart. I wanted to be maybe going back to Asia or somewhere. So I chose to go to a Bible college where I graduated with a bachelor's degree with a Bible major. That's where I met my wife, actually. Okay. My wife is a missionaries kid, too. Her parents were missionaries of Bolivia. I was talking to her this morning and she said, [well, actually, we're both third generation. And then our daughter is a missionary in England working with young people.] So she was saying, 'I'm a fourth-generation too!.Ray Loewe07:17So we need to get her in here. We'll get the whole South American approach later. So you're done with college now? How did you decide what you want to do? How did you formulate your plans? Where did you go?Phil Schwab07:32Well, I actually went on to graduate school, a seminary graduate level. When I was there, I met a lot of Chinese that were overseas students. My roommate for a couple years was from Hong Kong. We got along very well. I don't know as long as time went on, I thought, Man, I, I relate well to these Asians. And if possible, I like to go back to Asia.Ray Loewe08:00And you did.Phil Schwab08:01I did. We did.Ray Loewe08:02So where did you go now? You were married by this time and everything. So where did you wind up? And? Where did you wind up? Let's start there. Phil Schwab08:11We wound up in Taiwan. I was interested in a ministry with Chinese people. So we wound up in Taiwan with a daughter, three months old, and starting language study in Taiwan. So we studied Taiwanese full time for two years, part-time for two years, and got going on that Asian language. And then later, 10 years later, we studied Mandarin as well and spent two more years. Anyway, that was our start. We had to learn culture and language.Ray Loewe08:48So we have you down with four languages. We have some Japanese, and then Taiwanese, and then Cantonese,Phil Schwab08:57Actually Taiwanese, and only two sentences of Cantonese, and Mandarin. I like to tell friends you know, I've been in Asia so long now my English have some problems.Ray Loewe09:09We have English too. So when somebody becomes a minister or a missionary, what's the process? I mean, you just don't go to a foreign country and say, 'Here I am. I'm a missionary'. Do you get a sponsor? How do you do that? What what happens here?Phil Schwab09:30No matter what, how you go out, who you're with, you have churches behind you; whether you're with the denomination or you're in a big program with the denomination. In our case, our mission is interdenominational, which means that we have churches, from different connections that supported us. So you've got the church, sending you out basically; but, then you need to go through an organization that can lead you, and train you, and also accept you in the first place. Well, actually the church is fun to you. But the organization has work going on in that country. So they have a program going. So you come there, and they help you get the language and then get into ministry. So it's a combination of the church and the sending organization.Ray Loewe10:26So here you are in Taiwan now, what was your primary mission once you got to Taiwan? And what were your responsibilities?Phil Schwab10:37Well, twofold. I for a number of years, we were in what we call "church planting", which means starting new churches, and Taiwan, which is only 2%. Christian, today, maybe a tiny bit more, but there's a need for as we looked at it a need for churches. So we did that. Then toward the latter time, latter part of my time there, they elected me as field chairman. So I was responsible for about 60 people for a few years. Those are the two things I did.Ray Loewe11:12Then you were in Taiwan for 23 years. What caused you to go on next? Because next was Hong Kong.Phil Schwab11:19It was. The year was 1996. Our organization realized that there were a lot of openings in China at that time. I mean, China was wide open. It just happened to be really wide open at that time for people coming in to do medical work, educational work, other kinds of social work, working with tribal, poor, tribal people, all kinds of things. So our mission asked me to be kind of the point person, and the good place to be a point person was Hong Kong. I was trying to help teams get started in China. That's what I was doing for four years after we left Taiwan.Ray Loewe12:07Let's go back to these two places that you've been. When you look at your experience in Taiwan, is there any particularly thing that stands out as a memory, or a tragedy, or a benefit, or anything that you want to talk about?Phil Schwab12:26Well, you mentioned a tragedy. That's because I've shared with you we did face a tragedy.Ray Loewe12:33I cheated on that one a little bit.Phil Schwab12:34Our son Brian was 15. He was in the American School. He was a freshman in high school and doing very well in English. Of course, it was Americans school. But also, he was one of the best students in Chinese. He took Chinese as a foreign language. Just a regular kid, you know, he liked soccer and so forth. He was in a dormitory because we were living three hours away from the school. His dorm dad planned an outing, a camp out by a river. Some of the dads were there, and some of the teachers, and so the guys were swimming at one stage along the way. The people in charge didn't have any safety equipment, just plain old, what he called life preservers, and all that kind of stuff. Because this is like 30, 32 years ago. So, unfortunately, Brian jumped into this river along with some other guys. It had been raining for three weeks and the river was very swollen. Somehow he, he got swept away, and we were too far away to actually rescue him. We lost him and didn't find his body really for a week. This is a big thing, not only for us, but for all his friends, and colleagues that we've had there in Taiwan. Ray Loewe14:17You took a tragedy and you're doing some good things about it. I know you have a campaign here to improve safety equipment, to make sure that that doesn't happen again. This an extension of your being a missionary, I think to a large extent. So anything else you want to say, that unfortunately, you have this in your life?Phil Schwab14:41Yeah. Excuse me. We have a daughter and a son. Brian and then Beth Ann was two and a half years older. If I could focus on the main thing that I faced in this situation was being able to forgive the school and the people that planned this thing. And basically, faulty planning, allowed this to happen, allowed the accident to happen. So I had a challenge with this. Just a simple word forgiveness, being able to forgive the school and it all happened internally. No, they didn't know I was struggling with this. But one guy was on the staff of the school said you should sue the school. And I just very simply said to him, you know, the Bible says Christians don't sue Christians. And it was a Christian school. And it was not intentional. But nevertheless, this was a struggle for me. I told God at one point, I said, I feel very bitter and very hateful here. But if you can change me, I'm willing to be changed. One day, as I was out walking, I realized that I had been changed by God. I never had any problem with the bitterness and the hatred and all of that for the next 32 years till today. And it was a miracle.Ray Loewe16:10So let's take a different approach here and go back because one of the things that we've found about all of the luckiest people in the world is one of the mindsets that they have is, is the fact that they work real hard to find their sense of purpose. I think yours might have been a little easier, because it was kind of you were born into it, to some extent. So what is your sense of purpose in life? Phil Schwab16:35When I met you at the swimming pool, you asked me the same question. It kind of shocked me, I don't have people just saying, what's the purpose of your life? You know, the first time I met you, you know? I said I'll tell you, I'm a minister. The Catechism says, the purpose of mankind is to love God and enjoy him forever. That's the purpose of my life.Ray Loewe16:58It's helped you make decisions along the way as to where you want to go, how you treated your son's death, and everything. It's interesting exploring lucky people for a long time. It's amazing how many people have no sense of purpose or can't define what their sense of purpose is. So when you can do this, and when you can get a handle on it, it certainly allows you to live your life in a more fulfilling way. Let's go on here because there's more to your life than we've had so far. We're in Hong Kong, and now we're going over to China. Where did you live in China and tell us a little bit about the China experience?Phil Schwab17:42If you look at a map of China, and I like to call it the New England of China because China sticks up just the way the United States does. So we lived in a city called Harbin, H-A-R-B-I-N. A lot of people call it "Ice City", because it's below freezing almost half of the year. They have this big Ice Festival there every year. It's very famous. This is a long story, but this is where we ended up. We felt like people were interested in learning English, they were interested in medical teams, various social services we could provide. So a team of us, five couples, ended up in Harbin. I was there with part of that team for almost 10 years. And I liked it. You could ask the question: 'You've lived in all these places? Which place did you like best?' Well, I liked China best because the people, at least in that area, more disconnected from Beijing, the big cities. They weren't spoiled, like people we've been with other kinds of Chinese that were kind of wealthy and kind of first worldy. This area, they were just wondering why we had come all this way and all that stuff. They were very easy to get to know and so we established friendships that have lasted till today. In fact, I'm on a Zoom meeting once or twice a month right now with some of the guys we got to know there. I call one pastor there about once a month to and have a long conversation with him. So here I am. We left there in 2008. And here I am, all these years down the road. These are friendships that really meant a lot to us. These are people that appreciated our being there. It doesn't seem like any of the Hong Kong or Taiwan really necessarily appreciated our being there. Oh, another American big deal. But this that was the attitude of these people. So we just right from the word "go", we established close relationships and they were very good. They reached out to us. They were very open. So that was our favorite place to be.Ray Loewe20:03It's interesting you're still in touch. Yeah. 13, 14 years since you've been away? Phil Schwab20:10About 14 years. Yeah.Ray Loewe20:12So continuing with your life, you now came back to the United States, right? So you're in of all places, Washington, DC, that had to be a big letdown for you after all of these other places, right? Phil Schwab20:27In some ways it was, but in other ways, depends on what you mean, right? But we were invited, we were actually on loan to another organization, from our organization, to work in Washington, DC. And this organization's purpose was to minister to leaders in Washington, DC; so on the hill and in the Pentagon, and then also foreign diplomats. That's why we were asked to come, is with our background. And overseas for all these years, they asked us to join a team, a small team, to do various projects to help these diplomats to adjust in some ways. Also, if they were interested in studying the Bible. That's what we were really excited about doing that with them. But we were there for almost 10 years before we retired to our fourth country. My wife calls it Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And we love it. It's like country, we've been in all these cities. Now we're in the countryside, and we love it.Ray Loewe21:40Let's talk for a minute about being retired because retired by a lot of people's definition is you sleep late in the morning, you go play golf, you do crazy things like that. You're far from being retired. So what is it that you're doing now? And where are you? Where are you headed in the future?Phil Schwab21:58Well, I tell people, I'm retired but not tired. I was eager to, well, actually, my wife was worried about our moving here that I go get in my rocking chair. I wouldn't really know what to do with myself. But early on, we came to know the proportion of refugees here to the population is one of the very highest in all of America. So we ended up joining a team of people that were already working with forming welcoming teams for the refugees. We're starting a church that's trilingual. Actually, whatever is said in English is translated into Arabic and sometimes into Russian. This is moving along. But we're also developing welcoming teams that help families get settled, find jobs, learn to drive, all of these different things, that get the kids in school and all of that. I've taught a couple, a new family. They came with three kids, beautiful family from Syria. But what happened was the husband was ganged up on back in Syria. They hopped on him, took him away, and didn't give him anything to drink for two days. When they gave him something to drink, they brought this big cup of what looked like water, but it was actually Clorox. He drank enough down to really ruin his system going down. The US government is really interested in bringing in some people who have serious physical conditions, and we have the facilities here to help people like that. So anyway, that's, that's his background. I've enjoyed teaching the husband and wife English, but in this case, I had to start with ABCs and helping them write their alphabet. So that's pretty basic. But the kids, this son, who's in fifth grade now, or I think he's in seventh grade now, he picked it up in about six months. He was quite fluent in six months. He would sit down with us, this couple that was just on the basics, and he would help us interpret and so that's one of the things I enjoy doing very much. There's other practical things like I've already said that we help in developing these welcoming teams. Ray Loewe24:46I could carry this on forever, but unfortunately, we're near the end of our time over here. I think our listeners are going to very easily see why you're one of the luckiest people in the world, in spite of the tragedy in your life. Because you found a way to deal with all of these things in a way that not necessarily make you happy but make you fulfilled. The track that you've been on is just absolutely fascinating, from China to Japan, or Japan, I guess to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When you start driving a horse and buggy over here, then we'll know you're in your next level of your career. Do you have any final comments that you want to add before we sign off?Phil Schwab25:39That's a good one, that's hard to do. I think every day, all the problems you face you accept as coming from, we say coming through the hands of a loving God is how I look at it. So we can accept whatever happens and deal with it because he realized that it comes through that grid and we can survive.Ray Loewe26:03Well, Phil Schwab, thanks for being a guest on Changing The Rules. Thanks for being one of the luckiest people in the world. At thanks for being you. Luke, why don't you sign us off?26:21Thank you for listening to Changing The Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

Ellen's Website:  https://www.nextactunlimited.com/ Transcription:00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Good morning, everybody. This is I think, a lively host, although sometimes I worry about that a little bit. But we're here in our studio in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, I have to get that right because we moved our studio from New Jersey recently, and we're here with our engineer, Luke, and Luke is going to make sure that all of this runs correctly, and that we have a successful podcast. So I want to remind everybody that the name of our podcast is changing the rules. And you know, all through our life, we're saddled with rules. And I remember growing up, my parents told me what to do. And then the church told me what to do. And then my school teachers told me what to do. And then I went to work and my job, people told me what to do. And there was a quote by a very interesting guy by the name of Steve Jobs. And you know, who we know from Apple his Apple career. And he came up with an interesting quote, and he said, you know, if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. And so what we're introducing here in our show is some of the luckiest people in the world. And one of the things that the luckiest people in the world do really well is they sift and sort through the Bank of rules. We all have rules, we know we have to have rules. But sometimes we have to get rid of some that get in our way. Because rules tell us what we either have to do or what we can't do. So the luckiest people kind of sift and sort and make their own rules and make them work. And what we're trying to do here today is bring in another one of the luckiest people in the world as a role model for people who want to take control of their lives and live them under their own terms. So today, we have Ellen Quint, and Ellen, say hello to everybody. Hello, everybody. Okay, and Ellen has a company called next act unlimited. And we're gonna get into that a minute in a minute. But Ellen has a really great story. And it's very typical of what the luckiest people in the world go through. Because we know in life that nothing works the way we want it to work. And so the luckiest people in the world have found ways to constantly reinvent themselves, to stay on the track to keep themselves happy and engaged, and doing wonderful things for wonderful, wonderful people. So, Ellen, you're on? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your history and where you're coming from? And then we'll move forward.Ellen Quint02:49Sure, why don't I start with now, where I live, which is in, I'm actually talking to you from Morris County, where we have a weekend house, which is now our full-time house since COVID. Where I live, I live with my husband of 43 years. I'm the mother of two boys who are hardly boys anymore. Who blessed me with three wonderful grandchildren who are the light of my life. And just to provide your listeners with a visual because this is a podcast, and they cannot see me when I was young, and people used to ask me, What do you want to be when you grow up? I would always say five feet. Well, honestly, I never made it to five feet. And now, unfortunately, I'm heading in the opposite direction. So my goal now and if you mentioned I'm now the CEO of Next Act Unlimited. Where through workshops and coaching, I help current and since the retirees build their next act, as a matter of fact, Ray I am recommending to all of my clients that they listen to this podcast because I think there are some wonderful messages even though your target audience is not necessarily totally mine, you can be for yours is for everybody. I think it's a wonderful resource. And then I will tell you one other thing, my goal, my vision is to become the Dr. Ruth for positive aging. And I think physically I kind of look like that. And soRay Loewe04:23That's for a short person and a powerful body. Right. And with a powerful mind. That's great. Okay, so let's go back into history a little bit. So your career started somewhere and you did a lot of work, I think for nonprofits. So give us some history and then we'll talk about moving into the dark side.Ellen Quint04:46Right. So to go way back. I earned a master's in community social work and spent about 20 years in training and human resources for a very large national nonprofit. And it was an Excellent, very fulfilling career. But the organization was going through some significant changes. And so in 2000, I made the decision to look outside to, as you mentioned, to what I call it, the dark side or the for-profit world. As you and I discussed this in the side, this is an area your listeners might be interested in because we're working with retirees, people who have spent their lives in the corporate world, and now feel, okay, I want to give back, I wanted to take all of my experience and go into the nonprofit sector. It's not an easy transition. It's something I work with people on all the time. And there are ways to be more successful at it. And in fact, in this time of the great resignation, there are many more opportunities and possibilities. But that's an aside, maybe we can talk about that some other time. So back in 2000, there was a similar The reason I read that there was a similar work environment, a similar job market, and it was labeled the war for talent. And as a result, there was much more openness to consider someone like myself coming from the nonprofit world for the for-profit world. And being one of the luckiest people in the world. I was very fortunate to be hired in training by Deloitte, one of the large professional services firms. One of which you know well, they right because she worked for one of the big four.Ray Loewe06:21I did. Yep. That was part of the dark side. You're right. So go on, Ellen.Ellen Quint06:26It was probably the big eight set or the big 16. Even this is is? Yeah, one of the evidence. I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. And it was a great match. Every day, I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge across the plaza of the World Trade Center to get to my office in the World Financial Center. And then 911 happened. And it was a beautiful, beautiful, I don't know if you remember, it was a beautiful, sunny, crisp day. Someone was coming to me my office, so I had to get there early. So I took the subway and I walked up from the subway. And everybody was standing there looking up at the World Trade Center buildings, and there was smoke debris flowing out flames flowing out. It was really like walking onto a set of a disaster movie. And I realized after that some of the debris because I saw pictures were bodies coming down. And I everybody was paralyzed. Everybody was just standing there looking. And I didn't know quite what to do. I decided okay, I'm just going to walk home. So I turned around and started heading towards City Hall Plaza towards the Brooklyn Bridge. And there was an explosion that shook the ground. And then everybody started screaming. And people were running everywhere. And I realized that it was the second plane had hit. I just kept walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and looked back. And now I saw that both towers were in flames with smoke coming out and billowing billowing smoke. And I was listening to my Walkman radio. I don't know if you remember the Walkman plugged into my Walkman, and was listening to the news. And the stories were crazy. Nobody knew quite what was going on. It was so beyond anybody's imagination. I kept walking home, got home, got up to my 10th-floor apartment. And I watched as the World Trade Centers disappeared in smoke in ash, they were there. And then a second later, they weren't there anymore. It was a profound experience that lasted a very long time because we continue to feel the repercussions of that. And personally, I felt the repercussions of that because two months later I was downsized.Ray Loewe08:47Okay, so you were up close and personal at an event that most of us are glad we weren't up close and personal with. And let's talk about your transitions from a couple of things. Because you worked from the nonprofit and a big nonprofit by the way. I think it was a Jewish Federation. Is that correct? The Council of Jewish Federation Yeah. So So you were heavily involved in a whole lot of nonprofit activities, you then went to Deloitte, a consulting firm, and did training for the things that you were good at, but a different career in a different environment. And then we had this event occur, and the event was not one of your choosing. So so how did you react at that point in time, because you had to reinvent yourself again? To keep going, what went on through your head and what happened?Ellen Quint09:42What I did was basically take some of the techniques that I've used with clients, which is to have them really take a look at what would be an ideal job to go for. Because I realized I really had a choice. I could go back to nonprofits and look heavily in nonprofits, I had a 20-year career doing that. Or I had a wonderful year working for a well-resourced, large profit organization, Which direction did I want to go in. And I realized that in my target in the center bullseye of my target was really that I wanted to work for a for-profit, well resourced, large organization. But the environment in New York at that time was really terrible. People were living with uncertainty post 911, I was again, being the luckiest person in the world was able to find a job in a large insurance brokerage, a large global insurance brokerage, I won't name it. But it was a great job title. I was executive vice president of learning and development. But it was a terrible job. And so a couple of months later, when Deloitte called me again and said, Would you come back and actually head the group that you left, I left as a manager, they want to come back and actually lead the group. I said, Yes. I said, Yes, I had to go. And I would be working again, adjacent to the World Trade Center. And at that point, it was a big hole filled with rubble. And I had to decide if I could go around that coal every day, and look out those windows and see what was there. But I decided, yes, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Because then I had a wonderful, exciting, stimulating 20-year career at Deloitte.Ray Loewe11:31And then we had COVID, all right, so what happened? What happened at the COVID stage?Ellen Quint11:41You know, there's that there's an author named Bruce Feiler, who has written a book that refers to these events as life quake. And that's really what it felt like, you know, all these things feel like major life quakes. So yeah. So June 2020, I got the call saying you are being downsized. I didn't leave until November of 2020. But in that time period, between June and November, I decided to take my focus to take the experiences that I had in screening and facilitation and development, and do something that I've been thinking about doing for quite a long time, which is to create my own practice, my own consulting business of next steps unlimited, as you mentioned, which is focused on helping current and soon to be retirees feels their next step.Ray Loewe12:29Okay, and give us if you wouldn't mind a rough idea of, of age here, because I think it's significant. You could have retired, right?Ellen Quint12:40Absolutely. I was thinking of retiring in November, December of 2020, when I'd be turning 68. Okay, so I was left with 67. And yeah, so and to be honest with you, I was super old for being at Deloitte, they had the retirement age of the partners of 62. So I was a real gray hair, which I didn't have back then. But I was gray hair in that environment.Ray Loewe13:09Okay, so So you had to reinvent yourself a couple of times here, you know, you had your original career, you went over to what we call the dark side affectionately because it really wasn't the dark side. And then you, you had these two major events. And, you know, what I find is the luckiest people in the world take these events, we have them. They're part of life, we can't get away from them. Whether it's personal sickness, whether it's 911, whether it's a COVID kind of a thing. And the world changes and every time the world changes the luckiest people figure out how to get around those changes and make the rules work for them. So congratulations on that. But what I wanted to get to is, you had a number of statements that you made when we were prepping for this interview that I'd like to get on the table. And then we can talk a little bit about the new book that's coming, where people can find out more about these things if they want. So let's start out with preparation meets opportunity sprinkled with grace. Come on.Ellen Quint14:19So Ray, you as the luckiest guy in the world to speak all the time to the luckiest people in the world must have a book full of definitions of luck, or what luck looks like. So for me, this is what love has always looked like. And it's been my guiding principle which is luck is preparation meets opportunity. And as I've gotten older, I have realized it is also sprinkled with grace. So it's all your work needs to work of some higher power. meets opportunity. And as I've gotten older and wiser and smarter I've also really added on to that my third agenda, which is a quote from Thomas Edison, which is that opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. And I have certainly found that to be true.Ray Loewe15:22Okay, now again, because time is getting short over here, you have come up with 10 principles that you use every day with your clients, to help them figure out where they want to go in life and how to help create other luckiest people in the world. So, so take a minute, let's just go through them, we're gonna have to go through them pretty quickly. And we'll understand we'll talk about your new book coming out. And this is where people are going to be able to really get into the meat of this, but let's start out with you are the CEO of you.Ellen Quint15:55Right, and by CEO, I mean, you are the chief, everything Officer of you. So, especially for people who have come from the corporate world, where they have had wonderful support that they don't even realize that they've had, all of a sudden, you are responsible for the whole ballgame.Ray Loewe16:14Okay, and you better deal with it somehow. Right?Ellen Quint16:18Exactly, which gets the principle to, which is get real and deal. And that involves with knowing your numbers. And that's not just your financial numbers. It's also your health numbers. So and you realize things change, just a quick, a quick story on that I always had low blood pressure, all of a sudden, at 67, I started having high blood pressure. So I had to really take all of these behaviors that I had gotten used to and now shift it. So it's really important to recognize that you change and you have to become very real about these numbers as they shift.Ray Loewe16:57Okay. And again, I'd like to probe into these but given our time constraints, I think what use it or lose it was next on your list.Ellen Quint17:06Exactly. And then that's to do with building muscles. And that's just not physical muscle. I consider luck, a muscle. And it's a muscle that you have to work on. Including a gratitude muscle and your mental and emotional and spiritual muscles. So you use it or lose it. But you got to work on them.Ray Loewe17:24Okay, so why don't you take it just give us the list of the rest of them so that we get them all in quickly. AndEllen Quint17:34I'm gonna do it New York City, New York quick, okay. So principle for downsize to upsize. Principle five, kill the loneliness before it kills you. Principle six. Pursue purpose to find fulfillment. Principle seven. Appreciate your time, affluence. Principle eight give give, but set boundaries. Principles nine, enjoy the journey, not just launch. And then principle 10. Plant seeds of gratitude, watch them grow your legacy.Ray Loewe18:18Okay, and if you do all of those, you're going to be one of the luckiest people in the world, Aren't you?Ellen Quint18:24Exactly. Exactly,Ray Loewe18:27you know, I'd love to spend the time to go into more of these, you know, I think I think we may have to have you back on another podcast? When do you think your book is going to come out and give us the title of the book.Ellen Quint18:40The title of the book is "The Top 10 to thrive practical principles to maximize the third third of your life". And as to when it is going to come out? Ray, you are working on a book, you know that there's a mystery involved in this?Ray Loewe18:57Especially today, right?Ellen Quint19:00So I would say in about a year. Okay, soRay Loewe19:03you'll let us know, we'll have another session before that, probably. And we'll try and get closer to when the book comes out. Because I really want to know more about these 10 principles. They're tantalizing. And I can taste some of them but I'm not sure I understand them completely so so we'll come back and you know, just thank you so much for being with us and sharing a big part of your life with us. And your stories about the impact of COVID and the World Trade Tower, kind of a thing, and thanks for being one of the luckiest people in the world and sharing with us. So Ellen Quint. Next Act unlimited. We're going to list your website and everything in the podcast notes that we put so people can contact you. And just again, thanks so much for being with us and join us again and another week we're going to have another exciting guest and it will be another one of the luckiest people in the world, and Luke, sign us off20:05thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world. 

Transcription:00:02Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Hello, everybody, and welcome to our podcast, changing the rules. We're here at our brand new studios in Willow Street. We're here with our engineer, Luke Cagn0, who makes everything work for us. And thank you, Luke, for being here. And we're here with a great guest today. But I want to give you a little background before we start on changing the rules. You know, throughout our lives we're given rule after rule after rule. It started with our parents, it went to the church and went to the schools and went to our jobs. And everybody's got rules that they throw at us. And some of them are pretty good rules, and we want to keep them and some of them become irrelevant over time. But we have this body of rules that we have to get through. And I think it was Steve Jobs that said, when you're living your life by other people's rules, you're not living your own life. So we encourage you to go through the rules and pick the ones that are really pertinent to you. And we have today one of the luckiest people in the world that we're interviewing, and we define the luckiest people in the world as those people who take control of their own lives, design them to their own specs, and then live them under their own terms. And Dr. John Neely is with us today. And John is a medical doctor. He started his career as a pediatric oncologist. And you're gonna have to define that for us John and welcome to the world of podcasting.Dr. John Neely01:45Great, thanks so much glad to be here. So you want to know about pediatric oncologist? Well, when I went to medical school, actually, which was up in Hershey, you know, when you go to medical school, you're exposed to so many different things. And I for a while thought about surgery, I liked orthopedic surgery quite a bit. But what really caught my eye was taking care of children. And when I realized that I wanted to become a pediatrician. And I was influenced by some of the patients that I saw who were seriously ill at the time. And when I did my residency out in Minnesota, it was one of the bastions of teaching for pediatric oncology. And some of the very first patients that I saw there were patients that had serious oncologic issues. But it just touched my heart when I saw these patients, and I realized, for me, I could do general pediatrics, it's enjoyable enough, but I wanted to do something really challenging. And back in the day, I was encouraged because we were curing about 50% of children with cancer, which meant, of course, 50% were dying. So it was still a somewhat challenging and can be very depressing. But now we're up to about 85 to 90% cure rate. Oh, wow. So we now can tell most families, your child has something serious, we have a game plan for how to take care of it. And the odds are really high that they're going to be cured.Ray Loewe03:15All right. Now you told me while we're prepping for this, about an experience that you had walking down the street one of these days, why don't you tell us about that? Because that puts it all in perspective, I think?Dr. John Neely03:27Well, you know, I think one of the advantages for me of staying in Hershey to throughout most of my oncology career was I took care of a lot of patients and, and I didn't move away. So the odds of my running into them, and some of them I've are close friends with were pretty high. So here I was two years. Well, just before COVID I was at the Fulton Theatre. And they were doing the one of my favorite Christmas plays about the Red Ryder BB gun. And you know, and all of that.Ray Loewe03:57Cleveland, Ohio, right, yeah.Dr. John Neely03:59And it was intermission. And suddenly this guy comes up to me, who has I think two or three children in tow young kids. And he was probably about 40 at the time. And he comes in introduces himself. And of course, I didn't recognize him because I hadn't seen him since he was about 12. And, but I knew right away who he was. And I had taken care of him with leukemia. And not only was he cured of this, but he you know, we think about can you ever have children after therapy and all that? Well, he's living a normal, productive life has at least three kids of his own. And he just came up and said, You know, I saw you over there. You haven't changed as much as I've changed, and he wanted to say hi and thank me.Ray Loewe04:45Wow, what a rewarding career. So so it was all worthwhile. But you haven't stayed there have youDr. John Neely04:51No, and to get to kind of your thoughts about what do you do with rules? I remember because I was the chief of the division of pediatric oncology and a colleague in surgery came up to me at a meeting and he said, What what's your plan for, for advancing and I said, you know, I want to develop this program to the point that it has grown beyond my capabilities. Because I'm very good at patient care and, and some community things. But an area that needed to be spiffed up was research. And I said I want to work the division to the point where it needs somebody beyond what I can do. And that's exactly what happened, I became, I knew that somebody else needed to take over and I was getting very interested in other parts of medicine and leadership. And I made a decision to step down from the Division Chiefship, I still saw some patients, but I started to focus on other areas of medicine.Ray Loewe05:51Okay, so what are they? How did you ever divert your career? And then one of the things that is important as you go through this is that again, I mean, you exude luckiness. You're our definition of the luckiest people in the world over here. Because you, you follow what's fascinating and motivating to you and you make things happen. So what are these areas? How did you find them? And where are you?Dr. John Neely06:17Well, you know, it's an it's kind of like a pioneering spirit. Because I think one of the rules that I've had to struggle with is, because I was always told as a child, you can't fail, you have to get, you have to get straight A's, you have to do this and that. And I've set myself up in careers where there was a high likelihood of failing, because either it was something so innovative, that it wasn't the time wasn't quite ripe for it, or I grew something beyond my capability. So I wanted to move on. So it's been very difficult to say, Hey, I failed, that was a success. You know, that's an interesting thing to look at.Ray Loewe06:55Yes, it is, you know, and that's one of the things that I've learned over life, too, is that if you don't push yourself enough to fail, you're not learning. And I have two different kinds of days. I either have a great day, or I have a learning day, John. Okay.Dr. John Neely07:10That's the way I'm with golf to by the way. That's an impossible task. Yes. So I've kind of done two things since then I, you know, the way people advance in my career is typically they move to a new institution, and then they do the same thing again, you know, they may advance in their academic standing. But, you know, my opportunity would have been to say, I've done pediatric oncology here, now, I'm going to go do it at a different institution, or perhaps become a department chair, which is a different skill set. What I did differently was I decided to stay in the same institution, but to switch a career within that. So I got very interested in some of the things in medicine that I found to be short-sighted because we are trained incredibly well to take care of acute illness. So if you have a heart attack, or if you are in an auto accident, our health care system is the place to be it's the best in the world. But if you are struggling with a family history of heart disease, or diabetes, or there's a tendency to autoimmune diseases, we don't do a lot about the preventative aspects or looking at the whole body as to how they're going to respond. Instead, we throw pills at it. And that's just the nature of how we're trained. It's the nature of how we're reimbursed. So I've spent a lot of time trying to understand holistically how people can bring their life back into balance by having their different systems in their body optimized for function. And then, because my goal is people should, and we always talk about life expectancy as well, I am looking for what's called a health expectancy, I want somebody to live in a healthy, active, meaningful way to the very end of their life. And then they have a relatively short period of time where they may fail. But issues such as cognitive decline, or chronic heart disease, or chronic lung disease, are things that we need to spend more time trying to prevent.Ray Loewe09:16Okay, so where are we with this? What are we doing as a country? And what are you doing specifically?Dr. John Neely09:23Well, I've joined several different groups I've learned. I've done some certifications in what's called integrative medicine, some of which is very helpful, and some of which is not so well proven. And one of my goals is to help guide patients to these are things you can do that might really help and these are some things that you should steer clear of. So I've done that and then I've focused on a specific area of integrative medicine that's got a stupid name, but I can't figure in another name. It's called functional medicine. And, but the gist of it is instead of looking at systems like we look at in medicine, we you know, if you go to the doctor, they always do this review of systems. How are your eyes? Our your lymph glands? How's your heart? You know, and all of that the systems and functional medicine are? How do you take in the most nutritious food and digest and absorb it? What are the rules for what you should be eating and how you should absorb it and how you should protect your gut is an important part for nowadays is how do you feed and nourish your immune system so that when you are hit with something like COVID, you have the best possible chance of fighting that off. And then another area that is important is the environment. What are we doing with environmental chemicals and toxins and all that, that we have to detoxify?Ray Loewe10:51So where are we with that? And what kind of support do you have to do this kind of stuff?Dr. John Neely10:56Well, this is the uphill fight in a way because many of these things are looked at in medicine as Yeah, we know that's important. But we don't have time for that we don't have we're not trained for that. And so I've spent a lot of time and I still do teaching fellow faculty members, fellow doctors about some of the principles of holistic care as it fits into standard western medicine. Now I have some interest in things like traditional Chinese medicine, or Indian or Vedic medicine, I have work some working knowledge of it, but I am not a practitioner of those. But I can help people understand when they're approached with, with some questions about that. I deal a lot with the Amish, for example, who are wonderful people, they are very common sense. And they but they also are interested in natural approaches to things. So a lot of my work with them is saying, we have some things in standard western medicine that would help you but I want to help you with natural medicines that could help things go better for you and help you boost your immune system so we can work together and integrate care, you're going to be my new doctor here John. Well, that you know, that's why we were talking that a goal. Yeah, it's been, wouldn't it be interesting to do some podcasting on these types of topics or even lectures, so, and I'm a teacher at heart, okay, I you know, I'm in an academic medical center, I still love to teach. I'm doing some coursework here at Willow Valley. And that's,Ray Loewe12:31well, let's make a commitment to do that. But I want to probe into something else because you also talked a little bit about communication, and how to improve things. And I know you're doing some stuff here in terms of teaching people how to communicate better. So talk to me about where you're going there. Dr. John Neely12:47Well, that went back. And two ways with my medical career. One was, there's research out there that shows that the time between you go into a doctor's office, and they interrupt you, and don't listen is around seven seconds. So nobody ever has a chance to tell their story, their own medical story. And teaching doctors how to just sit back and listen and have the time to listen is so important. And the number of times in my holistic practice where I have somebody come in and start and I'm sitting there and starting to tell their story. And about five minutes into it, they cry. And they say you're the first person that has ever listened to me. So a lot of this is how do you practice listening? Now from the difficult conversation standpoint, that grew out of some of my teaching of leadership, what is the what are the principles of a sound conversation? What's the difference between a discussion, which by the way, rhymes with the same root word is percussion and concussion. So you can see that a discussion tends to be a back and forth, kind of a fight going on, like percussion or concussion, as opposed to dialogue, which in Greece means to flow through. So teaching how to listen and how to balance a conversation so that new ideas can flow through the group rather than just having a battle back and forth are the principles that I'm trying to teach.Ray Loewe14:20Okay, so here you are, you're in, I'm gonna say, a new phase of your career. I mean, you're phasing out of the oncology you'll never phase out of it. But you'll do less and less. And you've got the interest in preventative medicine, general health care, how do we take better care of ourselves, and this concept of dialogue, so where are we going with all this?Dr. John Neely14:47Well, you mean me personally. Ray Loewe14:48Yeah, we're you gonna take this?Dr. John Neely14:50Well, I do see that at some point, I will fade out I would say, I call it a glide path out of my career, although I still enjoy seeing my colleagues and seeing some patients. But that's becoming less and less of an issue for me, and I just see myself working with some of these other principles. Now, again, I am not so inclined at this point in time to spend day after day seeing patients, because I think might be, I would be better, my talents would be better served in some kind of a lecture type series, we're going to be perfect for broadcasting in some way or another. And then doing some small teaching, the idea of having good conversations, I'm currently doing it with a group of about 21 people here. I would love to see this applied to virtually anybody on the campus, including team members and administration so that we can all learn to converse together and learn together.Ray Loewe15:52So I'm going to change your name from Dr. John to Professor John over here. OkayDr. John Neely15:56You can call me the professor like Gilligan's Island.Ray Loewe15:59Yeah, you know, unfortunately, we're at the end of our time, and we're going to have to do a repeat on this because I think any one of these topics we could spend a whole session on. And I really am kind of interested in this. How do you take better care of yourself? Overall, as opposed to just fighting the battle of here's a symptom, let's get rid of the symptoms. And so let's make a commitment to do that somewhere along the line. And, you know, I want to thank you so much for being here. I think your career is a model for people. And I think it's an important model. You know, here you are you had your career, and most people stay in that kind of a career forever. I mean, after all, you're a pediatric. I'm going to stumble over my pediatric oncologist over here. But you're not satisfied with that. And you're moving on to new things. And you're still a young man. And as we I bet in another 20 years, you're still going to be working on this stuff. To the degree I can, I will be cool. So thanks. Excuse me here. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We've been with John Neely and Luke why don't you sign us off and we'll see you all here next week. Great.17:11Thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world. 

Transcription:00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:17Well, this is the lively host, Ray Lowe, and welcome to our brand new studio in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, wherever that might be. And we've got a great guest today. But before we get into our guest, I want to remind everybody that changing the rules is about the fact that all through our lives we're given rules, we're given them by our parents, and then we went to school in the school gave us rules in the church gave us rules, and our jobs gave us rules. And I think it was Steve Jobs, the Apple guy who came back and said, You know, when you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life, you're living somebody else's life. And we're lucky enough that every week we interview one of the luckiest people in the world. Now we have a definition for that. The luckiest people in the world are those people who take control of their own lives and live them under their own terms. And we certainly have one of the luckiest people in the world with us today. And I want to start out with a statement and you're gonna see why it's so important as we go through. You know, just because you reach a certain age in life doesn't mean that you have to retire and that you're washed up. And in fact, many people when they reach a certain age are useful. And sometimes they're outstanding, and sometimes they're even become the best there is regardless of their age. So I want to do is introduce today, Candice O'Donnell. You prefer Candice or Candy?Candace O'Donnell  01:45Candice? Candice. I think Candy sounds like a retired stripper at my age.Ray Loewe01:53Oh, well,Candace O'Donnell  01:55I go with Candace,Ray Loewe01:56you know, you'd probably do that well, too. But we'll get into that one. Okay, so So Candice has a really interesting career. And her background is she's raised four children. Okay, not a small feat. While she was doing that she taught English at Elizabethtown University, she has always been active in the theater. And then she got to a point where she had a chance to create some projects that were of interest to her. Okay, and a let's and that started later in life. So So let's, let's tell everybody how young you are.Candace O'Donnell 02:31I'll be at in about a month 27th two months 27 of JuneRay Loewe02:37And you know, many people, when they reach these certain ages, say it's time to shut down? Well, not Candice. Okay, so tell us a little bit about these projects that you created. And tell us about them in general. And then let's get specific about the three specific ones that you chose to put into life.Candace O'Donnell 02:56Well, as you said, I've been doing theater here in Lancaster for maybe 25 years. I've done the Fulton I've done EPAC, my favorite role until I started doing this. This one-woman show was Driving Miss Daisy. That's a wonderful play with a fabulous message. But I guess it was about six, seven years ago. I started doing these one-woman shows I had done small skits for the anniversary of the Fulton 200 and 50th anniversary of people who had appeared at the phone, one of them being Sarah Bernhardt. And so I started I had done a little bit on Carrie Nation, the Temperance leader I had done Abigail Adams, but I started going in earnest into these one-woman shows. I had always wanted to do Mary Lincoln. And I hesitated on Mary Lincoln because it was such a tragic life. She was mentally ill, and she lost every single person that she loved. Every single person that she loved was taken away from her. And I couldn't figure out a way to get into humor in it. And so I kept hesitating, because I thought can I put in audiences through 70 minutes, 75 minutes of hell, her life was hell. And then I remembered one of her funny lines. When she first met Lincoln. She was the belle of the ball and he was a country bumpkin. And he came up to her and he said, Ms. Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst kind of way. And then she said, and then he proceeded to do exactly that. So that's where I got a little humor and I developed that. And then I decided to undertake Sarah Bernhardt an entirely different person. I go for a through-line with each of my characters. The through-line for Mary Lincoln was much madness is divinest sense, which is Emily Dickinson. And was it the track it was a fact that she was mentally ill. Sarah Bernhardt entirely different story, my throughline for her was Edsp ofs. Riojan was not ago not at all. And Sarah Bernhardt lived life on her own terms. She was a survivor. She invented the casting couch. She invented the PR agent. And she invented the cougar. She was amoral, rather than immoral. She was a tremendous survivor. She continued to perform 10 years after her leg was amputated. And incidentally, she did perform at the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster. And finally, I worked my way to Queen Victoria. I had had a strong interest in her for years. And the subtitle there is he was my all in all, Victoria is about her obsession, obsession with her husband, Albert. And particularly funny because they had nine children, she hated babies. You do the math, you put it together? Why did they have nine children? She hated them. So that's how I got into these. And I've really enjoyed them.Ray Loewe06:03Okay, well, I'm sorry, you don't have any passion for any of these at all. But you know, I think what does it take to do this? So let's go back to the first one to Mary Todd Lincoln. First of all, you had to make the decision that this was a character that you were going to bring to life. Okay. And so what did you have to do? I mean, because you wrote the script, right?Candace O'Donnell  06:29You I, it takes me about two to three years to research each person. And, but it's, it's amazing. Ray, the, the through-line comes to you almost instantly, at least it did to me when you see what the glue of this character is what you're going to emphasize. Now, another writer might not emphasize it. But then your research all falls into place. AndRay Loewe06:56okay, so you write the script, you're starting two years ahead of before you're going to deliver this Right, correct. And you got to go where do you find the background data on these people?Candace O'Donnell  07:07There, you're gonna really be surprised at this. It shows you what a low-tech dinosaur I am. I get it out of books. You've heard of books, B. O. O. K. S. I do not get online. Most people today would do their research online.Ray Loewe07:23Yeah. You know, we have our engineer here, who is college age, you know, and I think he's a digital book guy. Oh, is he? okay. Well, maybe not. Maybe he knows what a book is. Okay, You read books in college? Yeah, he did. Okay, so you dig in, and you've got two years of finding a character? Have you ever started on any and then found out halfway through that you couldn't get enough material and you killed the character?Candace O'Donnell 07:48No, I'm a little bit too cautious a person for that? I wouldn't. I'm usually interested in the character and know something about the character. And also I use films and plays as my sources too. I know enough about the character that I have yet to launch into one and thought, oh, no, this is actually a boring character. In fact, the more I researched them, the more fascinating they become.Ray Loewe08:13Okay, so So you start digging into this and you got this two-year process and you're writing your own script? Yeah. Okay. Which probably helps you memorize the script. Okay, and now you're going to deliver this. Okay, so how do you deliver this do you need to get sponsors for this as something that you go to somebody and do a trial.Candace O'Donnell  08:38I'm really glad you asked me that question, because it gives me a chance to pay tribute to Betsy Hurley of the Lancaster Literary Guild, and I haven't been asked that question before. She's the person who got me into the Ware Center with Mary Lincoln. Okay, and once those were very successful, and then I didn't have trouble getting into the Ware center after that. Most of them the more sellouts. My difficulty was COVID. You know, I had a delay of several well, all told this production was delayed four years because of COVID.Ray Loewe09:16Okay, so this is why Candice is one of the luckiest people in the world. I want you to think about this as our listeners here. Okay, so she took on a project several years ago, she knew it was going to take several years to do this. She ran into the COVID barrier most other people use as an excuse to quit, but not here. We were going to deliver this and we're gonna get into a couple of other things later as we go. So all of a sudden, Mary Todd Lincoln appeared on the stage, and you have a script. And do you have any plans to do anything with that script? Now that you've given the character life?Candace O'Donnell  09:55You mean Mary Todd Lincoln? Yeah. I've been asked to do a program here at Willow Valley and what I sometimes do with my programs, I'll do 20 minutes of Mary Lincoln. I'll do 20 minutes of Sarah Bernhardt. I'll do 20 minutes of Queen Victoria. I'm developing that now.Ray Loewe10:14Okay, so you've finished, Mary Todd. She's now alive. Okay. Yes. And now you sat there and you said, Okay, what's next? You didn't stop. Right? So how did you get the drive to go on to the next one? Candace O'Donnell 10:34I, because I'm an incorrigible ham. That's what my husband would tell you. Okay, that's where I get the drive. Okay, I have to admit it.Ray Loewe10:42Well, this is where the passion meets the excellence, though, so go ahead.Candace O'Donnell 10:47Well, that's what motivates me. But also, right, I really get passionate about these women. That's why I don't choose anybody that I don't admire. I see their foibles. We all have our foibles. But I couldn't do it fair, if I were doing man, I couldn't do Trump because I wouldn't, I couldn't admire him enough to do him, okay, I admire all these women. And the more I know about them, the more I see the hell they went through in various ways, and they triumphed over it. So it's not at all hard to motivate myself to do this. It was hard to keep the faith during COVID. With all the delays, like um, and of course, as you and I discussed, I'm getting older. So I'm wondering if I'm gonna go into dementia. Oh, and by the way, I'm losing my balance. I take the balance classes here at Willow Valley. So I won't fall down on stage. Okay. So you're wondering, you are wondering, is the body is the mind going to fail me. And you just sort of leap out in faith,Ray Loewe12:00but you didn't give up? And it worked.  So let's talk about being queen. Okay. So I met you when you were going into this role of Queen of the empire Victoria. Okay. And, to tell you the truth, when I met you, I went to your performance with some trepidation. I mean, I'm sitting there saying, you know, can I sit through an hour plus of this? And I'll tell you, I was wrapped for 75 minutes, I don't think I moved in my seat, and to your little heart and to get me to do that. This is not me. I you know, so you know, you're an athlete. So you did something special here. And, it was a wonderful performance, and you brought this character to life. And I could just see in your eyes and your, the way you moved on stage that you are not you that don't you are Queen, Victoria. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about putting this one together. Because you had to start two years ago, you'd already done a couple of these. So you knew you could do it. Yeah. But now you started asking these questions in one of the things that you told me was about two weeks before you were gonna give this guess what, what happened?Candace O'Donnell 13:12Really, really nasty cough? And, of course, immediately tested for COVID. No, it wasn't COVID chest X-ray, is it pneumonia. And that was frightening I, people, I don't get frightened by performing because as I already confessed, I'm a ham I love to perform. But this cough frightened me. Because I was really terrified that I would not be able to deliver the performance. I was thinking of some other actresses I've worked with, but that was too late for them to memorize a 70-minute script. And I remember my daughter, saying, Mom, well, you may just have to give up on this. And she said I said, Well, I'm, you know me. I'm not giving up at this point. Don't you know my personality? And she said, Well, would you rather die mom? And I said yes. Yes. I would rather die than have to call Keegan my granddaughter was in the show introducing it. She's a temple, a student at Temple called Keegan and say, Keegan, we're not doing it. I would. So that was our big family joke. Mom would rather die than not do it so. As you know, you were there. Well, I was coughing right before I went out, I had to sucrets, I had tea. But now this, you said I'm the luckiest person in the world. And you are and I am and we are but that this was also a blessing. Because I absolutely believe this was God. I mean, I go out there and I'm not coughing. It's unbelievable to me, nor did I fall down on stage. Ray Loewe14:39And the show must go on. The show must go on. So I think this is a message that I want our listeners to get across. Most of us during our lives, put off projects that we want to do because life gets in the way. You know, here you were. You're raising four kids. You're teaching English. You know you're doing all of these things and then somewhere along the line, I think this germ woke up in your head and said, this has been there for a long time I have to do this.Candace O'Donnell  15:09Yeah. It's, it's, I think, if you have a particular passion, you almost have it from the womb.Ray Loewe15:17And it's never too late to do that. And even at your stage of the game, when you are worried about health issues and things like that, guess what? You know everything falls in place, it was no problem. You got it done.Candice O'Donnell  15:32I was flabbergasted by it myself. Oh, I want to say one other thing, because there were so many Willow Valley people in the audience, I had two very sharp audiences, you being one of the members of the audience, who were completely with me, and you can tell that when you step out on stage, you can feel the button. You know, Bruce Springsteen, performing as an exchange of energy between the audience and the performer. You can tell when they're with you, they were laughing ahead of my jokes. That before I got to my punch line, they were laughing. I thought, Oh, boy.Ray Loewe16:10Well, you know, what was the gift? Well, when we had to stand up and sing God, save the queen, and do the royal wave to greet you in there. I mean, you had us at the beginning. But I think this is a really good lesson for people because here you are. And I'm going to predict you're going to do another one. I have no idea what it might be.Candace O'Donnell  16:30My husband will kill me but yeah, we can all see I'm incorrigible.Ray Loewe16:33And the other thing that you're doing here is you're creating scripts, that maybe somebody else will do not as well as you do, but they'll do it at some point in time. And, and the research that you've done is just phenomenal projects. And I think you're to be congratulated for doing that. And I think it just makes you younger and younger and younger. So there all right, it keeps you going forward. Okay, so, unfortunately, we're near the end of our time here. So it's flies. Do you have any, any parting comments, any words of wisdom to anybody who wants to do these things? Or anything for the good of mankind?Candace O'Donnell  17:12Well, I just want to say I am hoping to eventually sell the scripts so that they will live on after me. Again, you may think I sound like a religious fanatic here. If you can get the guts to get out there and do it. Something in my case, I believe it was God, but something will see you through. Don't be afraid to try.Ray Loewe17:39And with that, I don't think there's anything more to say. So Luke is our engineer here at Willow Valley. So Luke, sign us off, please.17:52Thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.