The Stats tab on Google Blogger says this blog now has 5,026,125 page views!
In the past year there were about 2,200,000 page views, distributed as is shown above. For the past 12 months the daily maximum was 32,775 on June 21, 2026.
And over the past month there were 292,000 page views. The daily results were a maximum of 32,926 on July 24th – over sixteen times the minimum of 1986 on July 8th.
The image of an hp laptop was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
It is important to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. From the Twin Falls Public Library I got a 2020 128-page children’s book with introductions by Tonya Bolden titled Strong Voices: Fifteen American Speeches Worth Knowing. The full text for each speech in this anthology is preceded by a brief biography of the speaker. Those speeches are:
Patrick Henry ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.’ One version of his text.
George Washington ‘Farewell Address.’ Excerpts and text.
Red Jacket ‘We Never Quarrel About Religion.’ Text.
Sojourner Truth “I Am a Woman’s Rights.’ Text.
Abraham Lincoln ‘Gettysburg Address.’ Texts.
Theodore Roosevelt ‘Citizenship in a Republic.’ Text.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself.’ Text.
Lou Gehrig ‘Farewell to Baseball.’ Text and video.
Langston Hughes ‘On the Blacklist All Our Lives.’ Audio.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon.’ Text.
Martin Luther King Jr. ‘I Have a Dream.’ Excerpts.
Fannie Lou Hamer ‘I Question America.’ Transcript.
Cesar Chavez ‘Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984.’ Text and audio.
Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.’ Abridged text.
The Duke Cigarettes lithograph of Patrick Henry came from Wikimedia Commons.
An article by Valentin Termite at the Idaho Capital Sun on June 18, 2026 is titled Believing in the goodness of people: Idaho human rights center celebrates 30-year anniversary. It links to their web page on Wassmuth Powerful Practices, which briefly are titled (and then also explained in detail):
Collect Joy
Design for Belonging
Listen Deeply
Stay Curious
Notice and Name Bright Spots
Align Actions with Values
To collect joy you should:
“Notice, savor, and share moments of connection, warmth, and delight as expressions of human dignity and belonging. Paying attention to what is life-giving cultivates hope and sustains commitment to building a better world for all.”
And, to listen deeply you should:
“Offer your full presence to another person without interruption, judgment, or trying to fix. Seeking to understand feelings, perspectives, and needs affirms that every person matters.”
On October 27, 2024 I blogged about A new building at Boise’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights with quotations carved in stone.
The border for the thirtieth came from OpenClipArt.
This blog just hit a milestone – a total of over four million page views (exactly 4,002,327).
As shown above, over the past month the daily results were a maximum of 21,529 on April 22nd and a minimum of 812 on April 5th. There are wild fluctuations!
And, for the past 12 months the daily maximum was 32,316 on August 21st, 2025.
The computer cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.
Since 2015 (except for 2023), on the first of January I have posted about how only you can prevent bad presentations. That slogan, of course, is based on the Smokey Bear one about preventing wildfires. My last one was that Only you can prevent bad presentations in 2025!
How can you do better? There is an article by Maurice Decastro at Mindful Presenter on December 28, 2025 titled 10 Ways to Develop Strong Public Speaking Skills in 2026 that lists these ways:
Overcome your fears
Learn to tell stories
Own your voice
Learn to pause
Understand how you move
Involve your audience
Create impactful slides
Learn from the masters
Cultivate a growth mindset
Get some professional help
Images from Wikimedia Commons of Carl Cohen, Frieda Pavlo, John Archibald Wheeler, and Mark Kac had captions added using PowerPoint.
I just passed a joyful milestone - 3000 blog posts. My first pair of posts were over eighteen years ago on May 26, 2008. There have been 3,144,713 page views or an overall average of 1,048 per post. The five posts with the highest number of page views are:
25,900: October 27, 2009 - The 14 Worst Human Fears in the1977 Book of Lists: where did this data come from?
22,300: July 5, 2009 – Two types of speech outlines:speaking and preparation
17,200: February 6, 2019 – Is flip-chart a racist term?
8,980: December 29, 2011 – How can you easily draw dotted chalk lines on a blackboard?
7,490: December 6, 2021 - Most Americans are not terrified of public speaking
On July 22, 2024 I had blogged about Celebrating 2,700 blog posts. The first four then were the same as the current ones.
The image of a crate came from OpenClipArt.
On May 22, 2025 the famous puppet Kermit the Frog spoke. (His creator, Jim Henson, was an alumnus of that university) He’s the ultimate speech prop! An article from The Associated Press at npr on May 23, 2025 is titled ‘Leap together,’ Kermit the Frog says in address at the University of Maryland graduation. His three main points are about:
1] Finding your people
2] Taking the leap together
3] Making connections
You can watch a fifteen-minute Youtube video at PBS NewsHour titled WATCH LIVE: Kermit the Frog delivers commencement speech at University of Maryland. And on May 23, 2025 The Baltimore Sun has another article titled Transcript: Read Kermit the Frog’s University of Maryland commencement speech.
Kermit is voiced by Matt Vogel, as described on June 6, 2023 in a nineteen-minute Youtube video at Webster University titled Matt Vogel | Webster University Commencement Speech |2023.
There is a 2025 useful, brief (141 page) little book (5-1/4” wide by 7-3/4” high by 5/8” thick) by Carol Leifer and Rick Mitchell titled How to Write a Funny Speech … for a wedding, bar mitzvah, graduation & every other event you didn’t want to go to in the first place. A preview is at Google Books. An article about it by Carol Leifer and Rick Mitchell at Oprah Daily on March 11, 2025 is titled A Foolproof Guide to Writing The Perfect Wedding Speech. Sections in the book are summarized by the following tips:
Getting Started Tips
Keep it short and sweet.
Think about the ‘where’ and ‘when.’
Keep it classy! You’re most likely giving your speech to a mixed crowd, so keep it G-rated.
The Beginning Tips
Let the crowd know who you are and your relationship to the honoree.
Share with the guests the story of how you first met.
Before or at the event, ask if you are going to be introduced.
The Middle Tips
Start by trying to list five personal attributes about the person – a good path to humor.
Personal Stories! About them! About the two of you together! That’s the gold.
Don’t talk about yourself unless it’s in relation to the honoree.
Parents? Don’t make your speech an obnoxious reading of your kid’s resume.
Don’t use cliches.
No detail is too small to get right.
The end tips
Speak from the heart briefly.
Raise a glass and toast your honoree(s).
Give them a warm embrace before going back to your seat.
There are five examples of speeches with helpful comments added:
Rick’s Speech for Charlie and Rachel’s Wedding (pages 50 to 53)
Betsy’s Real Speech for Jessica and Zack (pages 58 to 61)
Cousin Elliot’s Best Man Speech for His Brother Joel (pages 62 to 67)
Rick’s Speech for Ella and Jake’s Wedding (pages 68 to 71)
Carol’s Speech at Cousin Jay’s Memorial (pages 72 to 77).
This book also contains four very useful templates:
Wedding Speech Template (pages 94 to 97)
Retirement-Speech Template (pages 102 to 105)
Graduation-Speech Template (pages 107 to 110)
Bar Mitzvah-Speech Template (pages 111 to 114)
The wedding speech one is more useful than a July 2019 Toastmaster magazine article on page 8 titled Tips for the Perfect Wedding Toast. The template says:
Wedding Speech Template
“Hello, my name is [your name], and I’m [relationship to honoree (X)]. I remember when I first met [where and when you met (X)]. Now everybody knows that (X) is [a characteristic or quality of (X)]. And I saw this very clearly when [something (X) did to display this characteristic or quality].
[(X)’s new spouse (Y)? You’re lucky because (X) is a very good person. (X) once [something nice (X) did]. But of course, I’ve also got to tell you the funniest story about (X) [a funny or embarrassing story about (X)].
And then (X) met (Y). I’ll never forget when (X) told me [story (X) told you about meeting (Y)]. Now it’s plain to see that (Y) is [complimentary asset of (Y)]. And it’s clear to see that these two should be together because [obvious reason (X) and (Y) should be together].
(X) was a disaster as a single person! (X) once [funny or embrarrassing thing (X) did while single].
Today, we toast their marriage! (Y)? You’re going to have to get used to a lot of things about (X). [Three funny things about (X) that you are sure will drive (Y) crazy].
So let’s raise our glasses to (X) and (Y). I am honored that you asked me to speak on this monumental occasion and wish you nothing but the best from this day forward! Cheers!”
My cartoon was derived from happy-day and generic-book cartoons at OpenClipArt.
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Back on February 12, 2018 I had blogged about Falling in love and Table Topics questions. A half-dozen articles in the last six months describe sets of fifty or more first-date questions which also can be used for the impromptu Table Topics section at a Toastmasters club meeting.
One article by Sanjana Gupta at VeryWellMind on September 18, 2024 is titled 50 First Date Questions to Make a Great Impression. Hers are divided into three categories:
Casual and Light-Hearted Questions [20]
Deep and Meaningful Questions [20]
Questions for Navigating Awkward Silences [10]
A second article by Chanel Campbell at The Glowing Muse on October 28, 2024 is titled 50 Good Questions to Ask on a First Date. Hers are divided into five categories:
Ice-Breaker First Date Questions [10]
Funny First Date Questions [10]
Flirty First Date Questions [10]
Deep and Meaningful Questions [10]
Light-hearted First Date Questions [10]
A third article by Emily Weaver at PopSugar on January 29, 2025 is titled 70+ First-Date Questions to Keep the Conversation Moving. Her six categories with 76 are:
Funny First-Date Questions [11]
Important First-Date Questions [12]
Ice-Breaker First-Date Questions [15]
Flirty First-Date Questions [12]
Serious First-Date Questions [14]
Would-You-Rather First-Date Questions [12]
A fourth article at Lifebulb on February 4, 2025 that has 58 questions is titled First Date Questions to Get to Know Someone Deeper. There are four categories:
Ice Breaker Questions [10]
Questions to Get to Know Someone [10]
Deep Conversation Starters [20]
Compatibility Questions [18]
A fifth article by Jenna Ryu at SELF on February 12, 2025 is titled 50 Non-Awkward Questions for a First Date That’ll Actually Spark a Connection. Her three categories are
If you want to start off light and casual [14]
If you’re looking to learn more about them – without overstepping [20]
If you’re ready to suss out your compatibility [16]
A sixth article by Isabelle Eyman at Camille Styles on February 14, 2025 is titled 50 Thoughtful First Date Questions That Skip the Small Talk. Her five categories are:
Getting to Know Each Other [10]
Personal Interests and Hobbies [10]
Life Values and Beliefs [10]
Fun and Lighthearted Questions to Ask on a First Date [10]
Future Goals and Ambitions [10]
Her ten about getting to know each other are:
1] What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
2] How would you describe your perfect day?
3] What’s something you’re passionate about?
4] What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t yet?
5] Do you have a favorite childhood memory that still makes you smile?
6] What’s your favorite way to spend a weekend?
7] If you could lve anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be?
8] What’s the most unusual job you’ve ever had?
9] Who or what inspires you most?
10] What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I have a good reply to the eighth question. When I was serving as a medic I once had to take footprints of all our aircrew. (Footprints are one way to identify the dead after a crash and fire). I mentioned that on November 10, 2024 when I blogged about Some memories of the Air Force Reserve – for Veterans Day. The Air Force manual had vague and useless advice about inking the glass plate used for prints. But the Treasury Department had a manual on Palm Prints with great specific advice: just put a sheet of white paper beneath the glass, and then ink until you can barely see the paper. Problem solved.
The silhouette came from Openclipart.
February 9th is the Super Bowl, which is time to consume mass quantities of food and beverages. There is an article by CaLea Johnson at Mental Floss on January 27, 2025 titled The most popular Super Bowl foods by state, mapped. It shows results via two maps, one for foods and another for desserts. I have summarized them with the two bar charts shown above. Buffalo Chicken Dip was the most popular food ( in 29 states) and Strawberry Shortcake was the most popular dessert ( in 14 states).
But these are not really the most popular foods. That article instead says:
“The coffee machine review site [Coffeeness] selected the most popular Super Bowl foods per state by analyzing search volume data from December 2023 to March 2024. Researchers looked at about 1300 food types and around 300 dessert-oriented keywords to determine state-specific preferences, with a focus on search trends leading up to and immediately following the big game.”
There is another article by Jessica Randhawa at the forked spoon on November 23, 2020 titled The Best Buffalo Chicken Dip Recipe (+Video).
For New Year’s Day I traditionally post appropriating the Smokey Bear slogan that “Only you can prevent…” and tell people to do better presentations by planning. My first image comes from a 1794 cartoon by Robert Dighton.
A second has a portrait of orator Anna Elizabeth Dickinson from around 1860.
A third has a cartoon of Bourke Cockran by George Yost Coffin from 1896. (All three images came from the Library of Congress).
There is a long article by Charlotte Hilton Andersen at the Reader’s Digest on November 21, 2024 titled 50 New Year’s Resolutions You’ll Want to Keep. Her twelfth is to Do something that scares you:
“Make a list of things that scare you: public speaking, skydiving, holding a spider, eating Brussels sprouts, asking your boss for a raise, calling your crush. Now, pick one thing on the list and find a way to do it.”
There is another long article from ElegantLivingEveryday titled 76 New Year’s Resolution Ideas for a Fulfilling 2025. Number 14 is to take a public speaking course to boost confidence.
Last year I posted about how In 2024 only you can prevent bad presentations, and linked to my previous posts.
For Christmas Joe Biden had a 2:19 video message titled The 2024 Holidays at the White House: A Season of Peace and Light with stunning graphics and this thoughtful message:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given. There’s a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story. Silent night, when all the world goes quiet. All the noise, everything that divides us, it all fades away in stillness of the winter’s evening. And we look to the sky to a lone star shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child.
A child Christians believe to be the son of God bringing hope and peace and joy to the world. Yes, even after 2,000 years Christmas still has the power to lift us up, to bring us together, to change the world, speaks to all of us as human beings who are here on this earth to care for one another. To love one another. And too often we see each other as enemies, not as neighbors, not as fellow Americans.
So, my hope this Christmas season is that we take a few moments of quiet reflection. Find that stillness in the heart of Christmas and look at each other. That’s who we really are, fellow Americans, fellow human beings worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. {Be]cause there’s so much that unites us as Americans, so much more that unites us than divides us.
We’re truly blessed to live in this nation, and I truly hope we take the time to look out not at one another for one another as we sing Oh Holy Night. May I wish for you and for our nation now and always that we’ll live in the light, the light of liberty and hope, of love and generosity. Of kindness and compassion, of dignity and decency.
So, from the Biden family we wish you and your family peace, joy, health and happiness. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and may God protect our troops.”
In contrast, an article by Diana Glebova at the New York Post is titled Trump keeps it merry and bright with recycled Xmas photo and simple wish. All he first almost thoughtlessly said was:
“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!”
And then he recycled his 2018 official Christmas portrait captioned MERRY CHRISTMAS 2024! Last year I blogged about his previous one in a post titled MAY THEY ROT IN HELL! doesn’t belong in a Christmas message.
Meanwhile, King Charles had a very thoughtful ten-minute Christmas Broadcast (beginning and ending with music) which you can either watch on the BBC with added sign language, or at The Telegraph without it.
I removed the German caption from a 1904 Christmas postcard.
Even though I am a seasoned citizen there always are things I have not noticed before. Recently I was watching a YouTube video of a Jim Gaffigan comedy routine telling a story about Pinecones scented with cinnamon. I’d never noticed them, but as shown above, I found bags of them on display outside of a Winco supermarket here in Boise. Jim started his monologue with:
“Occasionally I will perform in a city I’ve never been. I did a show recently in Bend, Oregon. Beautiful Bend, down there in the woods. And I had never been to Bend, Oregon, so I asked my Uber driver, I was like, ‘What is the industry? The industry here in Bend, Oregon’ He very quickly answered: ‘Pinecone Factory.’ Oh well, obviously he didn’t hear me. I don’t even know what question I’d have to ask to get Pinecone Factory as an answer.“
Then the driver tried to explain about around the holidays, when everyone buys their bags of pinecones. Jim replied that no, they don’t. But when he Googled, he found out about pinecones that smell of cinnamon. When I Googled, I found an article by Dylan J. Darling at the Bend Bulletin on January 31, 2020 titled Pine cone picking catching on. It explained that you could get a license for picking them in the Deschutes National Forest. Presumably scent gets added in the factory. You can also get them scented with vanilla! But I think pinecones just should smell like pine trees.
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In spring 1972 I enlisted in the Air Force Reserve to be a medic - before the Army could draft me. That meant I would first be on active duty, and then have reserve duty for six years: one weekend every month and two weeks during the summer. So, I spent the second half of that year on active duty. First was basic training in San Antonio. Early one morning the son of a Chief Master Sergeant (the highest enlisted rank) told me his father’s favorite joke:
“What is the difference between the Air Force and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.”
Then I had tech school in Wichita Falls. Finally, I had on the job training in a hospital near St. Louis.
In 1973 I started graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University. I also was working for one weekend a month as a reserve medic in the clinic out at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport that was part of the 911th Tactical Airlift Group. Most of my job was helping do the annual flight physicals. That meant I did tasks like eye tests, hearing tests, blood pressures, pulse rates, electrocardiograms, and even footprints.
From 1973 until 1975 on paper I belonged to a unit called the 911th Mobility Support Squadron. It is jargon meaning replacement troops, and had the acronym MSS. No vowel you add to make it pronounceable looks good. I vote for mess. You may remember the 1988 movie Bull Durham about a minor league baseball team. Kevin Costner plays the veteran catcher Crash Davis who just has been sent to the Durham Bulls to balance out a trade. When he walks into the team manager’s office the manager scowls and asks, Who are you? He introduces himself by replying that he is just the player to be named later. My reserve unit felt like that. We were only a minor league team. Morale always was near zero. If I did not have to be there, I would have preferred to be somewhere else.
In July 1975 I was told I had been reassigned. Now I belonged to the 758th Tactical Airlift Squadron. I walked up the hill to the base operations building to sign in with my new unit before going to work. When I went in, I noticed that everyone was smiling. They all were happy to be there. Their Admin sergeant welcomed me. His first five words were that: we are all professionals here.
Before I headed down the hill to work at the clinic, I needed to stop and use the bathroom. What I saw there amazed me. Inside the toilet stall door, under a clear plastic cover, was a sheet of paper listing exactly what each aircrewman (pilot, copilot, and flight mechanic) had to do to handle an in-flight nightmare – having one of the two piston engines on the plane fail. The title read Don’t just sit there; have an accident. As I washed my hands I looked around and saw that the same emergency procedures also were posted on the wall above every urinal. I thought, wow, these guys are really serious.
The 758th flew a twenty-year-old cargo plane called the C123K. If you saw the movie Con Air then you have seen one. It looks like the one shown above. It has a high straight wing with two piston engines, and a fuselage shaped like a pig. It carries 15 tons of cargo or up to sixty troops The C123K was not pressurized, and wasn’t really even watertight. It has a wimpy official name - the Provider.
But the C123K had a secret. Under the wings there also were a pair of auxiliary jet engines. Their added thrust could get the plane into the air from a very short dirt runway. It also could keep the plane flying normally with one piston engine completely shut off. The Air Force had a series of jet fighters whose names started with the powerful word Thunder: the F-84 Thunderjet and Thunderstreak, and the F-105 Thunderchief. So the 758th renamed their plane the mighty Thunderpig.
The 758th had adult leadership. They believed in personal empowerment. Treat all your people like adults and give them room to blossom. Tell them what needs to be done, and let them work as a team to get it done. Other than emergency procedures you don’t need to spell out exactly how.
Now, that was not the typical attitude in Pittsburgh back then. Mostly you got arrogant management butting heads with powerful unions like the United Steelworkers, the USW. Loadmasters in the 758th were a burly, boisterous, bunch of Polish-American sergeants who worked as hammersmiths over at a USW forge shop. Most were almost in the same shape as back when they had played high school football. They were proud of their reserve unit and treated it like it was their football team.
Eighteen months later I watched the 758th accept an award – the Grover Loening Trophy for best flying unit in the Air Force Reserve. Here is one reason why. One of their planes was flying low at night with a full load of Army Rangers getting ready for a paratroop drop. The ramp and door on the back of the plane already were wide open when one engine sputtered and then quit. They began to lose altitude rapidly. The crew feathered the propeller, started up the auxiliary jets and the mighty Thunderpig climbed and got them home safely. A less skilled crew probably would have crashed and killed all 45 people aboard.
Personal empowerment comes in all sorts of places. I found it in an Air Force Reserve unit. Which unit does your workplace resemble more, the Mobility Support Squadron (a mess) or that Tactical Airlift Squadron? Could you help change it?
An image of a C123K came from Wikimedia Commons.
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