Hopefully, dear reader, by now you've already seen those dreaded three words a few times. If not, I'm sure the shock will not last too long for you. Deep within our souls, even years after our graduations, those words can cause deep and sometimes traumatic triggers to our collective psyches.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I ask myself how well I know some of my friends. In a sense, I suppose we could ask that question about most of our friends. Once we attempt to move beyond the superficial, people can become sublime and mysterious indeed.

If there's one question I am frequently asked regarding this paper, it would be about your paper's publisher, Jim O'Bryan. Throughout much of this paper's history, Jim has been content to remain in the background, letting others provide the opinions and have the community limelight. Still, I thought it might be time to let you know a little more about this amazing person referred to by some of his friends simply as "Obie."

I've had a dickens of a time getting Jim to agree to running a column about him. As he said when I told him that I wanted to do this column: "This is not about me!" Well, perhaps not, Jim, but at least this particular column is about you. I think Lakewood would appreciate knowing more about the man who started all of this.

But first, a little background as to how this whole Observer Project came into being.

Not too many years ago, it was considered by some that when it came to "the arts," you either had natural talent or you did not. Professional illustrators, artists, musicians, and photographers often closely guarded the secrets of their trades, and so there developed a mystique regarding the arts that persists to this day.

Well, the dear old lady's sleeping now...supposedly waiting on official word from the Vatican as to whether she'll ever open her eyes again as a Catholic Parish. But for now, her bells are quiet. For many years, they were an integral part of Lakewood's daily life.

We who live in the Greater Cleveland area often seem to pay little attention to our central city of Cleveland, and often (other than perhaps during some Friday night high school football games) we pay scant attention to the other suburbs around us. Many of my out-of-town friends and family are often amazed to learn that many of us know relatively little about our region and its rich heritage.  

As those great Lakewood summer days approach, I often think of my columns as "wrapping up" like the school year does. That's probably the retired teacher in me, but I do wonder if there are any missing topics that perhaps I should have covered during the past year.

Recently in the national news, there was a report of a teen suicide, allegedly due to repeated bullying by a number of other students.

That news item caused me to reflect on the issue of bullying in school, and with my own experiences (both as a classroom teacher, and as a student) with this reprehensible behavior.

Virtually anyone, at any time, whether in school, or in the workplace, or elsewhere, can become a victim...or even become a passive unwitting participant in the bullying process. Whether we like it or not, our school days, work days, and even our recreational times, are social laboratories for learning about people and about life in general. Sometimes, the lessons learned are not good ones.

In my early school experiences, I was on the receiving end of bullying for several reasons. (Although I'd better point out here that there is NEVER a valid reason to bully anyone!) In the first place, I was one of the youngest and smallest kids in the room. Adding to those issues, I had a speech impediment, a hearing problem, and difficulty with walking. Any one of those issues could have made me a target for bullies, and the combination of them made for a number of difficult moments in my elementary years. In junior high, my dad was a teacher in the same building where I went, and this fact presented yet another twisted rationale for even more bullying to occur. Only after I had learned a number of techniques as to how to deal with bullies, did the bullying finally go away.

I think that perhaps the most despised word in the English language (to a graduating high school senior at least) is the word "advice."

After all, seniors have spent the last thirteen years of their lives (including kindergarten) receiving instruction, and education, and yes, advice. In their eyes, what more could possibly be told to them now, by ANYONE five MINUTES older than they are, about life?

Seniors, who have had virtually every aspect of their lives directed by adults up to this point, want to get on with their own lives, plans, and futures. They certainly want to have little to do with well-meaning but otherwise totally BORING grown-up advice.

Well, too bad. Here it comes anyway.

Wisdom, as anyone who has ever graduated from high school could tell you, is not the accumulation of facts, but rather the successful blending of those facts with life's experiences. There's an old saying attributed to American writer Mark Twain about never letting school get in the way of one's education. See, it's like this: If the choice came right down between "book-learnin'" and common sense, give me the common sense, anytime. Still, you really need both aspects in order to get by in this wild world of ours.

I'll make my own advice here real simple for you. There really are only two kinds of jobs out there. There's the job you will like, and the job you will not like. Which kind would you rather have? You've been in school now for thirteen years. Did that seem like a long time? If that question seems to have a rather obvious answer, then consider this point: You will be spending about three times that amount of time at your job. Unless you go into the teaching field, forget about those weeks off in the summer, and at Christmas and Easter time too. You'll now most likely be on the job for fifty out of fifty-two weeks of the year.

Yes, you'd better like that job.

Over the years, I've worked as a photographer, a professional musician, a private music teacher, a sales manager of a retail music store, and a musical instrument repair person. I've also done some public speaking and, of course, write these columns for you. The most important job I believe I've had has been in the field of school teaching. I was a teacher for more than thirty years, and those were some of the best days of my life. Truthfully though, each of my jobs has been an enjoyable experience. Enjoyable jobs are usually the ones that require some specialized training. If you receive specialized training, you will likely be paid more as well.

Remember, this is 30 years of time that we're talking about. As previously noted, you'd better REALLY like what you will be doing...or you could end up being REALLY unhappy.

It is critical, as well, that you keep your good name and a clean record. One silly mistake on a Saturday night, and your chances for a good employment future can go down the drain forever. Watch what you do on the internet, as well. The internet is indeed forever, and some of your unwise chat-room postings can follow you throughout your life like the reeking smell of a road-killed skunk.

Sometimes too, even when you think that you might have your future planned, you may need to shift gears when a better idea comes along. For example, I originally trained as a regular education teacher, but teaching those large classes for many years might have been a real challenge for me, due to my having a serious speech impediment. A VERY wise principal friend of my father's suggested that I go into special education teaching instead, as there would be smaller classes to teach, and young people could perhaps also identify with someone who had exceptional issues similar to their own.

When I thought about it, it made great sense, so that's exactly what I ended up doing. In fact, my "job" actually became more of a mission for me. Helping young people having special needs also helped me gain a better perspective on some of my own former childhood experiences.

In short, while I certainly hope you will make plans for what you think you want to do in life, always remain open to new opportunities as they come along.

The 20th century may well have been marked by some of the greatest disputes known to humanity, but one holiday created at the dawn of that century enjoys universal agreement around the world. That holiday, of course, is Mother's Day.

It all happened, as they say, in the twinkling of an eye. When the ball dropped on Times Square on January 1st, 1970, the "Sixties" were over...and none too soon, for many of us.

Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies, along with Buddy Miles, opened the year by performing at New York's Fillmore East on New Year's Eve, while Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians played uptown at the Waldorf-Astoria. These two musical groups, in a sublime way, helped, at least symbolically, to reflect the cultural differences struggling to prevail in our country in 1970.

For those of us living in Lakewood at that time, it had already been a time of profound change. On the evening of July 4th, 1969, a terrible holiday storm had ripped Lakewood into shreds. People died, trees toppled, and a vastly changed landscape greeted Lakewoodites who crawled out of their basements later that night to see the damage.

Actually, the weather during the 1969-1970 period was pretty much as it usually is around here. Funny though, unlike the current "global warming" theories, more than a few people at that time thought that the earth was actually cooling, and that maybe we were even getting ready for another ice age!

Ironically, both Simon and Garfunkel's song "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and Edwin Starr's "War" made the top 10 that year, again possibly reflecting the conflicting feelings of the American public at that time. Other top musical hits of 1970 included Guess Who's "American Woman/No Sugar Tonight," The Carpenters' "Close To You," Rare Earth's "Get Ready," B.J. Thomas' "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," and the Beatles' "Let It Be," among others.

Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix both died in 1970, along with actresses Inger Stevens and Gypsy Rose Lee. In February, the "Chicago 7" was found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Also in February, Lakewood's HAZE rock band played at an all-night party for the LHS class of '70 at the Lakewood YMCA.

Those of you who follow my columns know that, from time to time, I've included a discussion about faith. Sometimes that discussion has been personal, and other times I've tried to take a wider look at our city and the various faiths that worship here. The bottom line for me would simply be that I hope you all know that I am a firm supporter of a faithful, God-respecting life. Far too many times in my life have I known, or felt, the intervention of something far greater than myself. I am indeed a believer in faith. As well, I have great respect for any house of worship that is sincrely dedicated to God.

I mention this bias to you so that the rest of this column might be framed in that context. I certainly have no interest in wanting to question particular religious practices, but at the same time, I am trying to understand, in a broader framework, what seems to be going wrong with organized religion in America generally, and here in Lakewood, particularly.

That honest and caring people of differing faith traditions have often historically disagreed is well-known. That severe and long-standing prejudices, as well as persecutions, have also occurred in the history of religion are also well-established facts. Whatever one's religious tradition might be, one can generally point to a time when others of their faith tradition were relentlessly hunted down, tortured, or even killed.

In our own country's beginnings, we adopted a special clause in the First Amendment to our Constitution that attempted to insure that one's private faith practices would not be persecuted; and to a great degree, that's been the norm in our country. While there really is no "Wall of Separation" between Church and State (that particular wording is not in the Constitution), we tend to live and let live with our neighbors' faith practices.

Lakewood has, at least until recently, been a fairly representative model of traditional mainstream religious freedom of expression in the American urban environment. Although Lakewood's houses of worship have been primarily Christian, they have represented a diversity of beliefs within that faith tradition. (Our non-Christian neighbors, who have been involved with their own faith traditions, generally established their meeting places in regional settings beyond Lakewood's borders.)

In recent years, "For Sale" signs have appeared on the front of a number of Lakewood Churches, while others have been torn down, or merged with other congregations. At the same time, new or alternative worship experiences like the "Impact" service at Lakewood United Methodist Church, the Cross Point Church meeting at Harding Middle School, the Lakewood New Life Church meeting at (but unaffiliated with) the Lakewood Masonic Temple, and some extra-urban mega-churches seem to be attracting increasing numbers of  worshippers. Some of these types of services offer coffee, juice, and cookies, while joyful music and interactive cues are often projected onto big screens, and happy children sometimes roam the aisles. Frankly, some of these newer experiences are "packing them in," so to speak, while older traditional churches seem to be withering on the vine.

Why might that be the case?

That's a question that even trained church leaders debate, but I have a few theories. First, it's an open secret that there's long been a philosophical conflict between some religious points of view and certain elements of contemporary psychological thinking. Some traditional faiths, for example, never seem to arrive at a complete resolution of difficulties that many people have. At some point, on the other hand, psychological therapists often try to assist the beginnings of healing and resolution in a person's life.

Feelings of guilt, discomfort, doubt, and insecurity as to life's "big questions" sometimes can be difficult to resolve with some religious groups, and a kind of negative "co-dependency" can develop that can seem to be entirely at odds with Jesus' message of forgiveness and with moving ahead in one's life. People seek to feel better when they go to a worship service, but sometimes they can end up leaving a church feeling worse than when they came in!

As mainstream churches decline, money woes can also increase at an exponential rate. Constant pulpit talk about money can, and often will, increase as the collection plates get lighter. My grandfather sometimes said of his church that they were more concerned with "what I give, than how I live." I think that his feelings are shared by many frustrated believers these days.

At some point in the '50's and '60's, many mainstream denominations started to emphasize the "social gospel" more (feeding the hungry, saving the world, etc...), while de-emphasizing the traditional Bible-based religious worship experience. From the pulpit, one sometimes heard more about missions and money than they did the Word of God. After a time, frustrated people who were unable to effect change in their churches started to vote their dissatisfactions either with their feet or with their pocketbooks. It wasn't that the "social gospel" was necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself, but let's face it, listening to bad news on television every day is one thing. Hearing more of it on Sunday mornings, as a captive audience, is quite another story. Christians say that they love to tell people about the "good news" of Jesus, but so often, they seem to replace that good news with bad news!

The old joke about churches having their congregants simply "pay, pray, and obey" seemed at one time to be a very real template for some traditional churches that were content to rake in their money without providing either adequate solace or accountability to their congregants. These days, the laity is demanding a more participatory role in their churches, and greater accountability by their leadership. Churches still clinging to the traditional model of "pay, pray, and obey" are finding that not to be as easy to do as it once was.

More people these days are also looking for acceptance, understanding, and even some human flexibility. All too often, when they encounter some traditional churches, they find brick walls and rigid rules, at best circumvented by quiet winks and nods.

As well, there's been the historical "us vs. them" doctrinal mentality that in the past has split up churches, amoeba-like, into more and more denominations. Warm and loving congregational acceptance can change on a dime if a church member starts to openly dissent from the rules of some congregations.

Lastly, the ugly issue of "cover-up" must be included in this type of discussion. While the most sensitive, offensive and damaging cover-ups by church leaders involved the abuse of children, there were also aspects of financial and personal abuses of power that, too many times and with too many churches, were either covered up or hushed away.

While some people, in Christian forgiveness, no doubt wanted to believe that these sins could be forgiven and should perhaps even be forgotten, that's not so easy to do for the victims of these terrible crimes. When basic trust is lost in any case, there goes the whole show. These days, while many if not most churches have procedures in place to minimize some of the mistakes of the past, they still can never change that past, and that is something they must deal with on an ongoing basis.

So, is there a "fix" to the problems of declining mainstream churches? Well, one has to wonder whether these church tragedies might signal some celestial consequence for Lakewood's own lack of faithful stewardship with her many precious religious resources. It would not take a leap of faith to realize that, at very least, Lakewood's faithful need to start thinking about getting back to the fundamentally important aspects of their various faiths. Whatever our personal beliefs might be about the particulars, perhaps a good place to begin our own personal faith rebuilding process is within each of our own hearts (particularly as so many of our earthly houses of faith here in Lakewood crumble into dust).

Springtime has finally arrived, and the little sproutings of roses, daffodils and dandelions have commenced in our fair city.  Our sidewalks, yards, and gutters have been freed from the incessant snowfalls that marked this past February's experience of living in Lakewood.

You can't miss it if you've ever attended any event at the Lakewood High School Civic Auditorium. I'm referring to Viktor Schreckengost's compelling sculpture of John Chapman (also known as "Johnny Appleseed") kneeling above the doors of that facility. The sculpture has been used as a logo for the Lakewood Schools ever since its inception.

It HAD BEEN a great meal. Outside the restaurant window, the day was slowly slipping away, as the azure skies gradually turned to amber, in the fading away of a perfect afternoon.

Those of us who own pets share a unique experience of living with animals. I am, of course, referring to real animals here, and not your college roommate. Whether you have a cat, a dog, or in my case, birds, these lives intertwine with our own in ways sublime and wonderful.

There are times in one's life when things get REALLY bad. Fortunately, those times seldom last long, and with support from good friends and family, those unhappy times can be made more bearable.

A story only partly fictionalized....

Some of you may know that I took the summer off from writing my regular column here. Let's face it, column writing takes time, and sometimes more than a little research; not to mention the endless proof-reading and MORE proof-reading that one goes through in order to bring you something that hopefully makes a little sense.

For quite some time now, I'd been hoping to write a comprehensive history of the Lakewood Ranger names and logos for you.

My dear late mom used to say that she wanted no credit of any kind for whatever she did on this earth. She did not believe that we should seek recognition in this life for the good works that we do. She wanted her rewards to be in Heaven.

One of the best memories I have of my 1960's Lakewood High School experience is that of participating in the drumline for the Lakewood High School Ranger Marching Band. Lakewood Schools have an excellent tradition of inculcating outstanding musical talent, and that was nowhere more evident than in that drumline.

Although I've been absent from these pages for awhile, I certainly wanted to be able to write future columns from time to time, when I felt that there was something, or someone, worth writing about.

I’ve had the honor and privilege to be involved with the Phase 3 Building Facilities Committee. I have seen many dedicated community members take time out of their busy schedules to participate in the process of identifying the best possible ways to move forward with the completion of the rebuilding of our schools. The City of Lakewood is so very fortunate to have so many citizens who care enough to be involved in the process.  

Well, it's that time of life again for me. Time for a change. I'm planning to retire from column writing for awhile.

My first column for this paper appeared in the May 2nd, 2006 issue, and it concerned my growing up in Lakewood. Since that time, I've written about 80 articles or columns for the Lakewood Observer, and it's been a wild ride indeed. As this is now the 100th issue, I think that it's only appropriate that we pause for reflection.

Ken likes to use big words...extraordinarily big words.

Ken has an effervescent love of English vocabulary, drawn from his being surrounded by the great writings of the past and present.

Words are some of the most effective tools available in the transmission of ideas, but it's important to remember that words, like the letters that comprise their substance, are only symbols reflective of elusive and sublime ideas.

Ken always had lots of those words. Except for now.

It's hard sometimes to come up with words when emotions take their place. You see, the present magnificent Lakewood Library and its expansive array of services available to Lakewood residents are due, in no small part, to the ebullient and effusively persuasive talents of Director Ken Warren.

Polysyllabic prose aside, Lakewood Library Director Kenneth Warren is retiring this summer, after twenty-five years at the helm of the Lakewood Public Library system. 

Perhaps you've heard of the recent tale about that great single lady from Scotland who surprised judges at a recent contest with her outstanding singing talent? She came on stage, simply dressed and without pretensions, and captivated the world with those talents in spite of people's preconceptions and the numerous adversities in her life.