{"id":1030,"date":"2010-05-30T04:15:21","date_gmt":"2010-05-30T04:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=469"},"modified":"2010-05-30T04:15:21","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T04:15:21","slug":"houston-we-have-an-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1030","title":{"rendered":"“Houston, we have an ‘opportunity.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We keep traveling north for our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour<\/em>… \u00a0 I was interviewed by the Plainview Herald<\/em> newspaper. \u00a0 Reporter Haley Anderson asked me about the astronomical national debt. \u00a0 I said I gave a talk in Ohio one time, including a quite \u00a0astute and \u00a0complex (I thought) answer to solving the national debt situation (now at some $12 trillion). \u00a0 An Amish man in the audience said that my answer sounded good and everything, but he thought he had a better idea. \u00a0 “We need someone in D.C. with a calculator, that works,” he said. \u00a0 Since then I’ve scrapped my complex, long-winded answer, and adopted his… \u00a0 We then stopped in Happy, Texas (pop. 632 and home of: “The town without a frown.”<\/strong>)<\/em> \u00a0 I talked with the town judge \u00a0there about Hispanic immigration issues, played some sandlot baseball with our kids at a local park, then stopped for lunch at My Happy Place Cafe.<\/em> \u00a0 As you pull into the restaurant’s driveway, there’s a sign that says: \u00a0 No Trespassing!<\/strong> (Honest.) \u00a0 Then the first thing we were greeted with inside the restaurant was waitress Billy Jo who had on a t-shirt that read: \u00a0 “I’m not mean, I just don’t like you.”<\/strong> \u00a0 Then Billy Jo greets the next customer in with: \u00a0 “Hey, ornery!” \u00a0 What about My Happy Place Cafe<\/em> \u00a0 am I not understanding? \u00a0 …Then it was on to Amarillo, ‘by morning.’ \u00a0 (Sorry.) \u00a0 Actually we were late, getting there in mid-afternoon. \u00a0 It was high school commencement weekend and we met Dave Davidson who comes here from Newman, Georgia, every year at this time. \u00a0 Davidson, 76, is a graduate of nearby Vega High School. \u00a0 He said he played point guard on the basketball team at Vega, averaging three points a game. \u00a0 “We had a couple really<\/em> big guys underneath,” Davidson smiled. \u00a0 Davidson said he and fellow classmate Harold Dillehay played basketball and football together, but both struggled coming from “the other side of the tracks.” \u00a0 Later in life, both made it in the business world and decided to set up a scholarship fund to help those who might be struggling at Vega, like they had. \u00a0 For the past 20 years, the pair have given out 61 scholarships for $6,000 a piece. \u00a0 He said of those who have gotten the scholarships, 90% have graduated from college. \u00a0 (The fund was set up through the school and started with a mere $2,000.)… \u00a0 While in Amarillo, we attended the Holy Cross High School Graduation. \u00a0 The featured speaker was Hal Leedy, who owns a quite successful \u00a0local Chick-fil-A franchise. \u00a0 He told the students to beware of simply chasing “success,” the way much of the world looks at success. \u00a0 That is, we can be so driven in chasing the quintessential “American Dream” for ourselves, at the expense of not being “useful” and a servant to others. \u00a0 Which is what the gospel message calls us to, said Leedy. \u00a0 He also said we so often frame challenges and things that go wrong as “problems,” when we should be looking at these as “opportunities.” \u00a0 In fact, he said his employees are told they are not allowed to come to him saying, for instance: \u00a0 “We have a problem<\/em> \u00a0 in the kitchen.” \u00a0 Rather, they are to approach him saying: \u00a0 “We have an opportunity<\/em> \u00a0 in the kitchen.” \u00a0 Afterward I joked with Hal that maybe we could get NASA to follow suit. \u00a0 That is, the next time something on a spacecraft goes \u00a0haywire in deep space, maybe we’ll hear the astronaut say: \u00a0 “Houston, we have an opportunity <\/em>.” \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 Leedy also exhorted the students to: \u00a0 “Be yourselves.” \u00a0 I told him we were once at a motivational seminar where the speaker said to those in the audience: \u00a0 “Be yourself. \u00a0 Everyone else is taken.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We keep traveling north for our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour… \u00a0 I was interviewed by the Plainview Herald newspaper. \u00a0 Reporter Haley Anderson asked me about the astronomical national debt. \u00a0 I said I gave a talk …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}