The Only Real Sentinel News 200411

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Childhood Fable I know many of you ageless wonders have read or have been read this wonderful child's book "The Little Engine That Could" and I was surprised it is still readily available 90 years later. You can find it at Walmart, Kohls, Target or on line from book sellers. If memory serves me, it was about a little steam locomotive that wanted to climb a steep hill that a big locomotive had tried and failed to do. All the way up that hill the little engine kept saying "I think I can. I think I can" and the little engine did climb that hill. Fast forward, the message is still with us today. I have learned through life an important maxim. That is: if we/I think I can, I can. If I think I cannot, I cannot do the task. I was lousy at sports, did well in practice, but in actual games I feared not being up to the task and sure enough I wasn't.	The Peter Principle Doctor Lawrence J. Peter wrote his book "The Peter Principle" in 1965, published in 1969 and it is just as relevant today as it was then. Peter was an educator at a California university when he wrote the book. The book is chock full of concepts that every worker has experienced. I found a link to some of Peter's many quotes I have read the book back in the eighties and looking back, I saw it in the navy, saw it in the workplace everywhere I ever worked to some degree and to a massive degree in others. There are a few that I remember well and I will paraphrase here. We all rise to the level of our incompetence. Education is a process whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. Bureaucracy defends the status quo lang after the quo no longer has status. Lead, follow or get out of the way. Work is accomplished by those who have not yet reached the level of their incompetence. One last one, Poor workers are often made supervisors. My caveat here is that I have worked with terrific competent supervisors and ones that were horrific, so that quote is not always true.	Story Corner A man named Randy had wonderful dreams as a child. He could run fast, jump and even fly at times. As Randy grew older, his dreams began to change. They were no longer pleasant, to the contrary, they were confrontational, even to the point of fighting with other men. Later Randy began to have difficulty in his thinking, was that a dream or did it really happen? Things got so bad he tried not to sleep. His wife was concerned about him and she didn't know what to do. One night Randy fell into a fitful sleep. The next morning he was gone. His poor wife never knew what happened and no one ever saw Randy again. He had crossed over from our reality into another reality.