My Advice to High School Students Graduating Soon and Recent High School Graduates

As a former high school graduate myself, I would like to offer some advice to high school students on the verge of graduating from high school as well as to recent high-school graduates:

(1) Keep in mind that throughout your entire life, your years of attending high school will remain among the most influential and vividly recalled years of your entire life.
Over the course of your post-high school life, you will be having many thousands of nocturnal dreams during your sleep about your high school years. And during your conscious hours, you will have many "sudden recollections" about high school teachers of yours and high school classmates or schoolmates of yours, and about circumstances you experienced during your high school years.

(2) Take and obtain copies of as many photographs as you can of yourself and each of the persons from your high school years whom you admired the most, liked the most, loved the most, or felt the most inspired by.
Those "featured" individuals whose photographs you could include in your permanent personal scrapbook might include teachers of yours, a principal or vice principal, a parent of a schoolmate of yours who was also a parent whom you particularly admired or felt inspired by, a member of the janitorial staff of your high school, an attendance clerk or secretary at your high school, a teacher aide or volunteer from your school district or city who worked at or visited your high school.

Adding to your permanent lifelong scrapbook as many photographs as possible relating to your high school years will serve as a very tangible reminder to you throughout your life that you achieved this truly great milestone in your own life, and that you enjoyed many of the schoolmates, teachers, admnistrators, staff members, and parents whom you interacted with during that period.

(3) Obtain the full legal name, including the middle name, of each person from your high school years whom you admired the most. That information will make it much easier for you to later pursue a Google search in order to look up a former high school friend or high school acquaintance whom you admired and liked or loved.
You might also want to ask each of the schoolmates of yours whom you admired the most to please give you the full legal name and phone number of their parents. If you lose touch with that schoolmate of yours, you could always contact their mother or father and ask that individual to please give you a current E-mail address or current mailing address for that former schoolmate of yours.

(4) Exchange your E-mail address with many of the honorable schoolmates, and several of the teachers and other adult staff members or administrators, from your high school years. Those E-mail addresses will help you to keep in touch with and maintain a friendly mutually-constructive dialogue with persons you feel an affinity toward.

(5) Pursue some research to identify which hobbies and pastimes you would most like to pursue during your post-high school years. For instance, whcih of the lifelong-sports that you can pursue throughout your entire adult life appeal to you the most? Do you plan to enroll in a beginner's class in any of the lifelong sports you admire but have not learned yet?

Also, you might want to reflect on each of the hobbies and pastimes of friends and relatives and teachers and acquaintances of yours --- cooking particular dishes, for instance --- that appeal to you the most.

Did your Spanish teacher have a favorite recipe for cooking gazpacho that you liked so much you might want to ask her to please share her gazpacho recipe with you?
If so, you could add gazpacho to the list of dishes you enjoy preparing as a leisurtime hobby. This summer, you could practice preparing gazpacho during your leisuretime until you feel confident about making gazpacho from scratch. Gazpacho is perfectly suited to the summertime heat, since it is a cool-temperature traditional Spanish soup. It is also a soup that's very healthful for you and anyone you choose to share your gazpacho creations with.

Do you remember any out-of-the-ordinary hobby, such as fragrant-plant gardening featuring plants such as jasmines and gardenias and honeysuckles and roses, that a friend or neighbor or relative of yours pursues, and that you might like to pursue in your own leisuretime as well?

(6) Consider asking some teachers of yours or administrators at your current or former high school to please provide you with a signed and dated written letter of recommendation.

Another possibility: Contact several teachers of yours and administrators and some parents or members of the clergy who each had a high estimation of yourself and your capabilities. Ask each of those adult persons whether they would be willing to provide you with a favorable character reference if they were to be contacted by a prospective employer for yourself or prospective post-secondary educational institution for yourself.

(7) Give some thought to which of the adult persons you encountered during your high school years appeared to exhibit the greatest capacity for mutually-respectful, polite, law-abiding, privacy-respectful, strictly-mutual-consent friendship or friendly acquaintanceship with yourself. Some or several of those adult persons might make for good and honorable personal friends and mentors and professional associates for yourself in your post-high school life.

(8) Give some thought to the subjects you did not study during your high school years, but that you now believe you will have a need for in your post-high school years. For instance, did you not take any course in home economics, but you sense that you could save many thousands of dollars over the course of your life if you knew how to cook for yourself and pursue homemaking inside your apartment or home? It makes good financial sense, and it will also boost your self-confidence, if you consider enrolling in a cooking class or home economics class in the near future, such as through a local community college or during your years of attending a four-year college. Otherwise, you could take some time this summer to ask a female relative of yours you admire and like to please teach you how to become more successful at cooking and homemaking and personal budgeting.

Need for an Austin Aromatherapy Festival and Austin Aromatherapy Symposium

Austin, Texas, might make a fine site for an annual Aromatherapy Festival and an annual Aromatherapy Symposium and Workshop.
Austinites emphasize their devotion to healthful living, and to innovative, progressive lifestyle options.
It would not surprise me, in fact, if there already is an Austin Aromatherapy Association non-profit civic group. And possibly that civic group is already sponsoring an aromatherapy-theme cultural event in our capital city along the Colorado River.
All of this serves as a reminder of the additional need for factual research to find out what the Austin Aromatherapy Scene currently entails---and which of the current civic groups in Austin are promoting aromatherapy.
The proposed annual Austin Aromatherapy Festival and Symposium and Workshop tradition for our capital city might also feature public speeches by famous persons who have publicly endorsed aromatherapy. Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz reportedly is among the celebrities who advocate and practice aromatherapy, and she might welcome an invitation to give a public speech at a civic event of that type in Austin, Texas.

Urgent Need for United Nations Estimates on Human Beings Without Any Citizenship Status

I have been dismayed by the apparent failure of the Obama Administration thus far to assert as one of its top priorities the urgent need for the issuance and promulgation of a semiannual United Nations report that estimates, by country of residence, the number of persons throughout the world who are without any officially acknowledged citizenship status in ANY country.

The proposed report could also include statistics, by country, on the estimated number of persons throughout the world who are without any citizenship status in the nation where they currently reside. In that portion of the UN report, distinctions could be made between illegal aliens living in a cited country and those individuals who are legally residing in that country but currently without official citizenship status in that nation.

Of that latter group of individuals, the estimated percentage who have citizenship status in a country other than the one where they're residing, and who are not currently seeking to achieve citizenship in the country where they reside, could be provided.

Many thousands of Palestinians currently are denied the legal right of citizenship status in Israel or any other country, which is occurring in deplorable violation of those Palestinians' own human rights.

It is also noteworthy that individuals who are denied citizenship status in any nation of the world will be less likely to conduct themselves in a law-abiding and honorable manner. The involuntary amomie to which they are subjected by one or more nations severely undermines those persons' own ability to feel the full satisfaction of contributing toward the civic life and cultural life of the nation where they reside.

It also seems to me that there are many other people throughout the world, including refugees living in a new country, who are currently without any citizenship status in any nation or in the nation where they reside. A semiannual United Nations report would help to publicize those other shocking cases of persons deprived of the dignity of enjoying official citizenship status in any nation.

A Golden Opportunity for Great Britain: Help Ireland Develop Wind Power, Recycling, Environmental Protection Technologies

Queen Elizabeth II's courageous visit to Ireland this week has presented Great Britain with a golden opportunity to convert the Irish into lasting and true friends of the British.

Great Britain can do that in part by offering technical assistance and loans on behalf of the development of wind power technology and other renewable-energy technology throughout Ireland.

The financial savings that Irish homeowners and Irish business owners and the Irish government will incur from installation of successful renewable-energy technology throughout Ireland, will put a delighted twinkle in the eyes of all the Irish people.

That delighted twinkle and accompanying heartfelt expression of gratitude from the Irish will help to put an end to the unflattering reputation for violent volatility and nasty abrasiveness that has long plagued the Irish.

For too long, people throughout the world have referred to the "Land of Eire" as, instead, the "Land of Ire"----a European nation where vehement eruptions of viciousness from the citizenry were dismayingly frequent. (Even the Irish professions of national affability, as exemplified by the seemingly convivial jig, were regarded by many as parenthetical to the prevailing militance and misanthropy that marred the Irish record. "It seems that the Irish people, when actually sober, are more likely to be throwing hand grenades at their cited enemies than exhibiting true and sincere affability toward other human beings!", concluded many observers of Ireland.)

Great Britain can also "convert" the Irish into true and lasting friends of the British people by providing technical assistance to Ireland on behalf of installing recycling technology and recycling services, as well as improved environmental protection technology and services, throughout that republic.

Someday, perhaps in the year 2015, a future President of Ireland will be publicly declaring in a televised address directed at British as well as Irish audiences: "When I refer today to the good luck of us Irish, I'm often referring to how very, very fortunate we Irish are to have such very fine and peace-loving and generous neighbors as the British! With help from the very benevolent British assistance we've received, we Irish have achieved many urgently-needed improvements in our country that have greatly enhanced our standard of living throughout all of Ireland!

"I am convinced, in fact, that the finest and most powerfully benevolent and truest Leprauchans in the entire cultural history of Ireland have been in the form of very human and generous 21st Century visitors here who represent our best friend in the entire world---those very fine British people of today!"

Congratulations to the Queen: Elizabeth II's Historic visit to Ireland Fosters a Bold New Course in British-Irish Relations

Queen Elizabeth II of The United Kingdom deserves high praise for finding the courage and moral vision to pay an official visit to Ireland this week.

The Queen's journey to Ireland this week marks the first occasion in either 90 years or 100 years (news media accounts on the Internet offer conflicting information on this point) that a ruling British monarch has paid an official visit to Ireland.

The Queen, in her mid-80s, is proving to be a "Late Bloomer" in the finest sense of that term.

Queen Elizabeth in the year 2011 is hitting her stride as the Reigning Monarch by pursuing a bold new course for Great Britain. Her innovative style as exemplified this week is helping to promote greater harmony in 21st Century relations between The United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

My own "Congratulations to the Queen" is accompanied by my continuing hope that Her Majesty's innovative style this week will continue in another context as well.

As an American citizen of English and Scottish (and German) ancestry, and as the founder of a new religion with very strict membership-eligibility requirements, I remain very hopeful that Queen Elizabeth II will choose to send me a written reply letter on Her Behalf.

That eagerly-awaited reply letter to me from the Queen in England will be in response to the lengthy "Questions for the Queen" letter of more than 50 pages that I had mailed to the Queen by U.S. Postal Service in 2010, I believe it was.

The text of my "Questions for the Queen" Blog from August 9, 2009 (which I later printed out and and mailed to the Queen in England) can be found through a Google search, including at this blogsite.

In that "Questions for the Queen" letter that I had mailed to the Queen several months ago, and for which I have not yet received any Royal response, I politely urged Her Majesty to please consider granting an official Royal Oral History Interview.

That Royal Oral History Interview of the Queen could be videotaped for the sake of posterity, and could feature a variety of politely thought-provoking questions relating to Queen Elizabeth II's multi-decade reign and life.

My hope is that if Queen Elizabeth II through a proposed Royal Oral History Interview chooses to respond to some of the questions that I had posed to the Queen, her Royal Response during that videotaped interview will provide an invaluable addition to the National Archives of The United Kingdom.

That Royal Oral History or Royal Written Response to Questions for the Queen will serve as a very fine inspiration to millions of British citizens of the present and future, as well as to British Studies scholars and admirers of the Royal Family throughout the world.

Top Priority on Whom to Lend Money To: Those You're on Speaking Terms With Who Lent You Money In the Past

I would like to respectfully recommend that anyone and everyone who has ever borrowed money from others at any time should create a computer file listing of the names and addresses and phone numbers of each of those very kind benefactors.

That list will help to remind you to repay each of those generous individuals in full as soon as is humanly possible.

Just as important, that list will also provide you with a list of names of the individuals whom you should feel honorbound to lend money to in the future----in the event that they themselves ever ask you in the future if they may borrow money from yourself.

One exception to that policy, of course, would be individuals who lent you money in the past and whom you later choose to reject and exclude from your own life after you repay that individual in full.

Also, it would not be wise or prudent to lend money to any individual who previously lent you money (no matter how generous he or she was toward you in that way), but who later verbalized to you a permanent rejection of yourself.

A Question that Austin City Council Needs to Ask: Are Staffing Levels for the Austin Police Department's Sex-Crimes Division Currently Adequate?

One of the incisive questions that Austin City Council members should be asking is simply this:

Are there currently an adequate number of detectives and other police officers and support-staff members employed in the Sex-Crimes Division of the Austin Police Department?

I sense that the answer to that question is probably "no."

However, I myself have not seen or heard any recent local news media account addressing this very important question for the City of Austin and the people of Austin.

Another important question that the Austin City Council should be asking is the following:

In what percentage of the cases in which the Austin Police Department formally charges someone with having allegedly committed a sex crime is the criminal-law suspect actually convicted of that felony crime in a court of law?

It seems likely that increased staffing for the Sex-Crimes Division of the Austin Police Department could help to foster an increase in the conviction rate on individuals who get formally charged with having allegedly committed a sex crime in Austin.

At present, unfortunately, many Austin residents are completely unaware that there is, in fact, a Sex Crimes Division of the Austin Police Department. The phone number for APD's Sex Crimes Division is: (512) 974-5230.

Any and all Austin residents who have ANY evidence of any possible or alleged sex crime that they have observed, or that they suspect to have allegedly occurred, are each urged to immediately contact APD's Sex Crimes Division and share that "hunch" or "impression" or "factual information" or "suspicion" or "crime tip" with that nobly crime-fighting section of our municipal law-enforcement agency.