BLOG | dyauthorandspeaker

Davis Young
- Mar 1, 2022

DY: In Just a Few Words (#72)

I stand with Ukraine.

I took a break from humor last week and wrote about a couple of sporting situations where the adult role models failed. I ended that blog with the following: The plan is to return to my usual lighthearted missives next week. I sure hope nothing happens in the next few days to change my mind. Call me prophetic. Sadly. I am sorry to say the humor needs to wait at least another week.

This week I want to talk about role models again. But, this time I want to focus on someone who is showing up for his people. In ways no one imagined just a few short days ago.

While the Russian head of state sits in a custom-tailored suit in his Moscow office, something quite different is happening in Kyiv. A head of state in a brown t-shirt is quite literally on the streets alongside his people, putting his life on the line helping his country defend its freedom.

And those people are responding in spades.

Volodymyr Zelensky is what real leadership looks like. He is a role model in the truest sense.

The Ukrainian people are what real courage looks like.

The Ukrainian nation is what real patriotism looks like.

Guess who else has joined the fight in the streets of Kyiv? The former president, who Zelensky beat a few short years ago. President Zelensky and his predecessor are not political partners, but they are both rallying fellow citizens to save their fragile democracy. That’s what bipartisan cooperation looks like.

Perhaps we can learn something from our Ukrainian brothers and sisters as they rise to defend their nation.

In sharp contrast, Vladimir Putin is what a war criminal looks like. He is the personification of evil on earth. I truly hope he is brought to justice in an international war crimes trial just as Nazi leaders were after World War II. May he ultimately hang in a public ceremony at high noon on Moscow’s Red Square for all the world to see.

In the interim, he is a very dangerous person. He has the keys to the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, and he is not a well-balanced man. This is the most dangerous time our world has faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. That’s something to be understood and very concerned about.

Pray for the Ukrainian people. Pray for President Zelensky and his family. Pray for former President Petro Poroshenko. Pray for Americans to do whatever it takes to protect our own fragile democracy.

Winston Churchill said it best: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

One of these days I’ll get back to writing lighthearted blogs. But not this week, not when my heart aches for the gutsy people of Ukraine.

DY: In Just a Few Words is a blog that comes out when something needs to be said or every Tuesday - whichever comes first. Davis Young is a communications professional who adds 50+ years of experience and perspective to issues of the day. His emphasis in DY: In Just a Few Words will be humor (a touch of sarcasm here, a pinch of facetiousness there...). Once in a while, he will touch on something a bit more serious - but hopefully not too deep or depressing.

This blog is a product of DY Author & Speaker LLC. Feel free to quote content with attribution. Respond. Agree. Disagree. Share the content with your friends. Heck - even invite him as a speaker for your group! Enjoy!

Davis Young
- Feb 22, 2022

DY: In Just a Few Words (#71)

Gotta say, I am a little sad this week.

This has not been a good few days for the concept of role models.

Does the name Eteri Tutberidze ring a bell? She was just “doing her job” as coach of the Russian Olympic Committee skating team when she coldly asked a distraught 15-year-old skater after she underperformed, “Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why?”

Is that the coach you would want for your child? And, isn’t a 15-year-old skater still a child? Kids should look up to their coaches as role models. Is this role model behavior? Her two teammates (who captured gold and silver medals) were equally distraught at the situation - and also receiving no comfort from adults.

Folks, you don’t have to hit a kid to commit child abuse. If that coach’s reaction to imperfection isn’t child abuse, then what is? For the rest of her life, Kamila Valieva will carry the scars from her Olympic humiliation in front of millions of viewers. She needed a hug. That didn’t happen.

This child is a victim of a national athletic culture that is corrupt. Some adult gave her the drug that caused a positive drug test. Kamila didn’t go out and buy it from a school friend.

Now and forever she will carry the stigma of drug cheat. Let us not forget that the designation ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) came about in 2019 because of a Russian state-sponsored doping scandal. Included in that punishment is that the Russian flag is not included in Olympic competition. You can still compete. Just don’t show your flag. What a joke. What a slap on the wrist.

I usually try to inject humor into my blogs. Not this week. I’m upset. There is nothing humorous about what happened to that 15-year-old child before and during the Olympics. For those who made her a victim, shame on you.

And then there is University of Michigan men’s basketball coach Juwan Howard’s performance after a Michigan/Wisconsin basketball game on Sunday. Nothing humorous there either. We teach our kids that “hands are for hugging, not hitting” and then a Big Ten coach hits another Big Ten coach on national television. Where was any role model behavior there? I commend the University of Michigan for their quick action in suspending Howard for the remainder of the regular season, and the Big Ten Conference for fining both Howard and Wisconsin coach Greg Gard (whose behavior was also deemed inappropriate). But let’s not forget there was not one single shred of remorse from Howard until after his punishment was handed out. It makes me wonder if that was part of his punishment. Did he really mean it when he said “I am truly sorry”? Time will tell.

There, I have said my piece. The plan is to return to my usual lighthearted missives next week. I sure hope nothing happens in the next few days to change my mind.

Davis Young
- Feb 15, 2022

DY: In Just a Few Words (#70)

Man, I miss that car.

In 1959 I purchased my very first car. It was a 1949 full-size, four-door, black Pontiac. I was so proud of that car even if it was 10 years old. It looked like something driven by a senior-level Mafioso. It should have been in a movie.

Short-term pride aside, I’ve never been a car guy. Jay Leno and a bunch of my neighbors are what I consider car guys. On weekends, they’re out washing their cars, shining the wheel rims and telling others and themselves how cool their cars are.

I view a car as a means to an end – I have one so it can get me places. Simple as that. That's true, but if I was ever going to fall in love with a car, my ’49 masterpiece would have been it.

Just for the record, I paid $190 for that Pontiac. It cost me $205 to insure the first year. That’s one way to be upside-down on an investment in a hurry.

It had a radio that worked. And a heater. Plus roll-down manual windows. And whitewalls. Who would want a 1949 car without an ashtray to flick the ashes before flipping your used butt out a side vent window? Yes, it also had an ashtray.

No power steering, but this car did come with chains for snow.

Gas was 25 cents per gallon and, at least in New Jersey, you didn’t have to pump your own. Twenty-five cents. You read that right. There was always an attendant who filled you right up and he would squeegee off the windows while you went inside to visit a clean gas station restroom. A quarter a gallon and a clean restroom. Where can I sign up for that?

Today, a ‘49 Pontiac would be a top contender for an historic car museum. Imagine that… people paying money to see my car.

Alas, when I finally sold it in 1961, it was damaged goods. It seems my college roommate borrowed it one Saturday night for a date and somehow managed to dislodge the back seat. For the life of me, I cannot imagine how that might have happened. He couldn’t have been trying to drive it from the back seat, could he?

I only discovered the damage some time after when my about-to-be in-laws got in the back and the seat slid out from under them.

So, I sold the car for $25. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

I still miss my Pontiac. I really do.

Complete the information below to get an email when new blogs are posted.

You only need to subscribe one time to be added to the list. Thanks!