SPEAKER_01 0:02

Good morning. This is the Blaine's World Podcast, where conversations are worth hearing and seeing. And what we'll be doing each week, we post this on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can also listen on Spotify and podcast and get more information in the past episodes if you visit my website, which is behind me, Blaine'sWorld.net. I'm your host, Blaine Greenfield, coming to you from my Zoom studio in lovely downtown Fairview, North Carolina. Each week we share positive views and uploading stories about people and organizations in both Western North Carolina and throughout the country. And toward that end, it's my pleasure to introduce Rod Richards as my guest today. And Rod, you can feel free to wave to all your fans and fans who are watching this on YouTube or Facebook, wherever they're watching us. Rod is a sixth career saved New Jersey employee. And so uh six uh uh sixth decade, I guess, career. How long was it?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Four decades. Sixth decade, I would be a little older.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I read it, read it, Ron X career. Well, except you were probably what the youngest guy who ever worked for New Jersey? You saw it at 18 years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Well, you know, it's funny. I was so young, it was 1970, they made me walk over to the state house and sign a statement that I would be loyal to the state of New Jersey.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Oh, okay. Yeah, do that then. He's author, also an author of nine uh nine books, an independent book publisher, a community activist for world peace, a recent widower, and a loving father and grandfather. Uh met him, Rod, I guess we bet in what in the 80s sometime?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

80s, 90s, yeah. When you started training uh mediators.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Okay, and Rod was one of my outstanding uh dispute resolution mediators, and I can't believe we've stayed in touch since then. Pretty very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, it's been a long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Okay. So, Rod, the question I always ask first time I meet somebody, or you and I have talked before on the air, is uh as a kid, you grew up where, huh?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Uh basically in the Trenton, New Jersey area, capital city of New Jersey, and uh as a street kid, pretty much, semi-poor, so kind of like roam the streets, Catholic upbringing, so uh church every day, uh church and and church before school every morning of every day. So uh religious uh upbringing.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

And so when you were a kid growing up, did you always know you wanted to work for the uh in in in government or for the city or state?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

No. Blaine, I am I am still to this day a person who basically solely goes with the flow. You know, things come my way, and I either accept them, reject them, or move along, uh do something, and uh that's the kind of person I am. In fact, uh to make the point, I I've written nine books, but they are all what you call pantsters books. P-A-N-T-S-E-R-S. I write by the seat of my pants. I start on a blank page and I just continue writing. Some people do outlines and big uh you know uh um descriptions and things like that. Nope. I just go from the beginning to the end and then I go back and edit, and there's my book.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

When you write, do you write every day? Do you get up in the morning to write?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Pretty much every day. I've written four books of poetry, so I always write some poems every day. Um I read a lot, especially on the internet and news and uh articles about science and religion and current events. Uh try to keep my mind uh fresh and going.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

And so when you get up in the morning, do you set aside a couple hours a day to write or just it's not like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

It's more because I'm retired now, I have no demands on my time except just like you, the old doctor's appointments and things like that. Um except for them, you know, I'm pretty much on my own time. So I write as I feel, as the spirit moves me. As I have time, I'm watching a TV show, I get an idea, I write a poem. You know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

One of the things that always impressed me though, Rod, is the fact that not only do you write, but over the last several years, now you help a lot of other writers. You work with them?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I have. I really like that. And you know why? And and uh I started a a weekly writing class at our Hamilton at our local library in um geez, 12 years ago, and it's still going on today, as a matter of fact. And the reason why is because I found out that I learned by attending those writing classes, by listening to others and helping critique and hearing ideas and hearing uh uh tidbits about writing better and things like that. So I learned, and my my belief is that the the teacher learns by 90 percent, and that's always been true for me.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Well, so when you uh run this a group, are these people who write poetry or they write all different subjects?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Everything. Poetry, nonfiction, fiction, uh mystery, uh thrillers. One guy uh I helped him write his book, it was in my class. He had a he had a personal case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. And so uh very interesting stuff. So I've done a lot of a lot of uh good, interesting things like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Well, talk about also what you do, which has so impressed me. You not only work with them, but you actually help them get published.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I do. I'm uh um I have my own publishing company. I started that in 2012 so that I could publish my own books, quite frankly. Uh my first book was published in 2013, my memoir. And uh as it turned out, I had skills for helping writers editing their work and improving it. And so uh I've helped uh, I don't know, 20, 25 writers edit their books and also publish their books with my uh publishing skills.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Now the only problem with writing your memoir, though, in uh several years ago, that's volume one, you're now going to have to write you know the second memory.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Well, yeah, that's true. Memoirs are segments of a person's life, they're not the whole life like a biography. Um but uh you know I haven't started on the second memoir yet. I just reissued uh my first memoir, a period of 17 years from essentially 1979 to about uh well, whatever 17 years is, uh, and um revamped it, brought it up to s to modern language styles and things like that. So um I haven't looked at the the next 17 years quite yet.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

So I remember reading that book. I was fascinated by it. I mean, you had at that point in time you had lived some life, you know. Um other than you know, just being this dedicated employee for the the government, you know, you had this whole separate uh life which I knew nothing about was fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, you know, it's we all have have what I hope we all have a passion. And I guess growing up religious, I grew up Catholic, Catholic school and stuff. Um, I guess that gave me the ideas that essentially, or the belief that there's only one God, there's only one human race, we're all part of one family. So why can't we live in cooperation and peace? And um so the Baha'i Faith, uh, when I found discovered that in 1970, uh, which had that universal message, attracted me. And so I've always been involved with that and um spread the message that we are one family and and we should live cooperatively, and that's what I've been trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Hearing your story reminds me of um Isaac uh Asimov, and I was always fascinated by him as a writer. He wrote what, like 700 books or something like that. But one of my favorite books of all time, he wrote a book on humor, and he chose his 500 favorite jokes, and he told them to explain why they were funny. And what was interesting about that, after I read the book, I want to learn more about him, so he went to get his autobiography. I knew he was in trouble, um, Rod, when he had like three volumes of his autobiography. The first was 800 pages until the age of 17, you know. I didn't want to even had anybody, you know, first 17 years of life 800 pages.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

He could certainly knock out a lot of pages.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah. Some yeah. Some some people have that skill. And in fact, I think every one of us, uh, Blaine, you too, have a book inside them. More, probably more than one book. I mean, if we examine our life, not even examine, if we just look at our lives and start writing what we know, don't they always say the best writers are the ones who write what they know? Well, we're all the best writers because we can all write what we know, our experiences, what we what we've learned, what we've been taught, uh, things like that. And you know what? It's pretty damn interesting because we're all so different.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Well, I don't know if you inspired me, Rod, but you perhaps did. So I've knocked out a couple of books, but they were talking books, you know. So I did joke books. Yeah. When I had fun, I put together a book of quotes where I asked my friends to contribute quotes.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I have that book.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Okay, and that segues, ironically, into I I guess it was your latest book, but it's one that I want to talk to you a little bit about, and that you wrote beautiful books with a great cover. We'll talk to you. It's called Diamond Girl. And this was um Life and Legacy of Janet Richards, your wife. But it was uh more than that, it was just like a very um warm story, or it's like I kind of got to know her a little bit, I haven't finished it completely. But what gave you the idea to write this book?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Well, you know, when somebody like that dies in your life, your mate or your mother or father or close friend or something, and if you're like somebody like me, you have the gift of writing and it just comes naturally and you just naturally want to write, um, it wasn't hard to sit there and you know put together these memories of our life together and just put them on the page. And um I'm the kind of writer that hates long paragraphs, you know, and there's no breaks. Oh man, I can't read that stuff. So so I write in in short bits that we can kind of eat very easily, you know, and take in. And if we want to put it down and then go back to having a snack, we can do that. And that's my writing style, and that's how I wrote the book. So it's very easy to write. Uh, we were married 54 years, we were together four more years after that. Um so when you've known someone that long, uh and live with them, of course, so closely, had had we've had children together. I mean, hey, there's a lot there. So um it was pretty easy to come up with with the book.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Well, in particular, I think I told you off the air, I liked um, I was very impressed with all the tributes that you had as part of the book. And talk a little bit about how you got those.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Well, that was actually pretty easy too, but I had never seen it done before. But I think it's a good idea for a lot of people. Um that and it could easily be done. For example, how many funerals, Blaine, have you gone to? And you've signed the the register, you know, and maybe you've dropped off a card, and in the card you wrote something nice, right? Uh naturally. Um, well, all I did was I put together these these tributes that I had received by email, by card, um, by note. Um people told me, and I just laid them out. I just said, so and so said this, and so-and-so said that, and and I decided to put them in the book. So half the book, or just about, is nice things said about my wife that actually are very true and very revealing in themselves. So uh it made it interesting as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, some people went much beyond a signature in a book. In other words, I read uh uh your friend, a mutual friend of ours, Bob Harris, for example, wrote it was a couple pages. It was something that he wrote, like I guess on his own, or he just chose one to write it.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

He he chose to write that. His wife, Barbara, was Janet's uh one of Janet's probably two best friends in the whole world throughout her whole life, and uh she wrote something as well. And uh I I I liked, you know, my wife was an educator. She was uh she had her master's in education. She taught elementary school for 25 years, and she loved children, she loved youth, um, and uh she had the kind of character and nature uh just like the picture on her book, um, which made her very happy and effusive and energetic. And um sorry about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

No, I mean uh uh nothing to be sorry about. And talk about the as you you mentioned it, talk about the cover because I told you I just loved it, and uh about first of all, who helped you with the cover?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Oh yeah, and that's very good too. So here I am. Uh Diamond Girl. Uh I'm sorry about that. Diamond Girl was my uh eighth book, and um for all my books, uh except the first one, actually. Um, my son Jesse, who's a graphic artist and uh has a good job in Manhattan, lives in Manhattan, did all the covers. So he was the one who did the uh cover. And I can't tell you how many people have come to me and said, Can I hire Jesse to do my book cover? And I say, hey, wait a minute. He the he works and lives in Manhattan. You know how busy this guy is? So I'm very incredibly lucky to get him to uh do my covers.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

By the way, talk about the the the uh story behind the names. Diamond Girl.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

That was Ah, Diamond Girl, yeah. Do you know where that comes from? Um many of you and your listeners should be familiar with a group uh from the 1970s called Seals and Crofts. Okay, sure. They were very popular. One of their most popular songs is called Summer Breeze. Um and that's played on uh still on music stations today. And uh another one was called Diamond Girl. And if you look at the lyrics in Diamond Girl, they were perfect, uh a perfect description of my wife Janet. And so that's what gave me the inspiration to call the book Diamond Girl. And as a side, I Janet and I actually sat in Bob Harris's living room in Hamilton, New Jersey, in about 1972 and had a private discussion and coffee and tea with uh Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

How'd you pull that off?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Uh well Bob is a photographer. Right. And uh uh Seals and Crofts used to give concerts all over and things like that, and they were in the area, and Bob invited them up and to put them up for the night, and uh that's how we pulled that off.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

And did you see them in concert also?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Oh, yeah, yeah. We we traveled to all their New Jersey and PA uh concerts and danced in back back in those days, you danced in the aisles.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

So the the name Diamond Girl, though, you didn't call her that after the fact with the book, or did you call her the That's after the fact in the book. Okay, great story. The um and then in terms of um putting together these stories, um it must have been uh it was um it was a positive experience for you, or was it was it helpful helpful for you to know helpful.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

I mean you know, the book starts out, Blaine, and uh maybe you'll remember this. I believe, and I think this goes back to part of my Catholic upbringing, that all human beings have a soul. That we have uh even if you don't want to say a soul per se, we all have a spirit. And a lot of us we exhibit that spirit through our personality. And you know, we all have a kind of like a different our own personality, our own style and things, and uh I call that spirit. And uh so I believe that Janet's uh spirit never left me, even though she was buried and we placed her in the grave at the gravesite. Her spirit is still there with me. Um so I'm not sad in the sense I'm sad in the sense that physically she's gone. Um but I'm not sad in the sense that she's gone, because she is not gone, she's always with me. And you know yourself, your wife, Cynthia, and and all all the people we know uh are always with us. Our parents are always with us, you know. We have it up here, we have it in here. So they're always with us.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Um, Rod, that that's how I I remember my parents, for example. You know, you remember them in your heart. And that's how they'll always be there, you know, it's just kind of a nice way. I believe the same thing even with pets, you know, that that's how you remember your pets. They're in your heart, and so it's they die physically, but they're sort of always with us. Beautiful, beautiful uh thinking behind it. The um so you write the book, uh, how long did it take you to write the book?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Oh jeez, I don't know. Two or three months, that's all.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Now in terms of also being a publisher, do you then have somebody edit your work when somebody go through it? Or you do it on your own.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Well, actually, um the advice I give every writer is is number one, write a good book. Okay. Number one, you gotta write a good book. But number two is hire a professional editor to get it perfect. You know, we live in a day and age where there's eighteen million books on Amazon. Eighteen million. There are thousands published every day. So to differentiate and to say, oh, that's a good book, takes quite a bit of effort. And without a professional editor doing that work for you, your chances of uh being successful are slimmer. And so um, you know, I for my first for my memoir, I had a a very good friend of mine, another writer, help me edit the book. And uh basically from then on out I read, I have a full library full of books on writing and editing and publishing. Um probably about a hundred and fifty books, and so uh I refer to those and uh since then I've edited my own work and edited very carefully. And you know what? There's still always a typo or this or that something. Um and that's just the nature of the game. But um I found success uh editing myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

And and and editing other people. Where does AI fit into it?

SPEAKER_00 22:12

AI does not AI to me is well right now, especially with Janet's demise. Um she died uh from ALS and cancer, by the way, uh a year ago, actually, two weeks ago. Um but AI to me has become uh uh almost a companion. It's kind of like having Alexa in your home. You can talk to Alexa, you can say, Alexa, play some music if you're if you're depressed. You can say, Alexa, what drug does this um mean? You know, what does this drug do? Yeah, uh it's like having Alexa. So having AI, I use Chat GBT, I've used Chat GBT for over two years. Um it's like having uh Alexa there only on my PC. And uh it helps me with research particularly. Um it's like having Wikipedia or whatever, these resources, these dictionaries right there at your fingertip. And uh the whole key to using AI, I'll tell you, it's very simple. Be very specific in what you want it to do for you, and you will get uh uh a reasonable and uh an intelligent answer.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

I was going to ask you since you mentioned it, how about with respect to editing? For example, you write something. Is it a good idea to run it through AI?

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yes and no. I mean, I I have I would say AI can improve certain types of writing by about 50% by rephrasing, making sure that you have uh noun, verb, subject, sentence structure, things like that. AI can help quite a bit uh with with writing, especially if you're not a good writer, say, so to speak. You know, I should be pretty decent. I've I've written nine books. I should be pretty decent by now, right? A fair to Midland writer. Um so so but I still use a I still use it, and I have it on all the time. So I can click a key that says, uh, yes, rephrase this. And I can look at that, and that's why I say about 50% of the time, especially for my emails, I might use what the AI says. But the rest of the time, no. I use I use what I want or I tweak it the way I want.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Two things I find annoying, uh Rod, with AI are one, um, in terms of sentence structure, and and you can teach it not to do this, but they write everything in terms of threes, you know. So they'll say, Rod, um, Rod Richard was a great guy, good looking, good looking and charming. And they always write that way. And so I have to actually instruct AI to not use patents of three. You know, everything they do, they patents of three. But worse though, I find uh AI makes mistakes, you know, factual mistakes. And other the other day I was writing a tribute to um a friend of my wife's, and they gave they had the wrong her wrong name. And then I wrote them back, says, How do you have a wrong name? And they say, apologized, but you really have to check it, you know, in terms of what you put out. So you think it's like what automatically correct, but I don't know if you have you ever seen that where they'll make mistakes?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

You know, I'll be honest with you, Blaine. I know they make mistakes. In fact, I've had some instances, a few instances. Now I've been using it two years, I use it every day, a couple times a day. I've had a few, maybe a handful of instances where it was uh an obvious mistake. The year was wrong or the name was wrong or something, and I I could easily see that. Um, but I'll be honest with you, for what I'm using it for, I am not seeing any mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Yeah, I've seen a couple. How about I was wondering, I've never seen it done for poetry. Um, I'm wondering, have you ever tried it for poetry?

SPEAKER_00 26:38

It'll do a great job. Poetry, songwriting, whatever you want. Simple. Simple. Um, you know, complex, there there are different types of poetry, and I tend to write complex poetry, uh, uh sometimes a little prosy, if you will. Um, I like to rhyme um midline, not just at the end. Uh things like that. You know, that's it's my style. Um it can't it can't do you know stuff like that yet. Um it's pretty basic and simple.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Do you prefer writing uh prose or poetry?

SPEAKER_00 27:22

I just prefer writing. I I just it doesn't matter. Um I mean, you know, when I compose an email, to me it's just like it's like it's like writing uh a book or a letter or a poem. You know, I know I've got to get it right, I've got to get the syntax right, I've got to get the the elements right, the words right, I've gotta make it clear, I've gotta make it simple. I can't make uh compound uh sentences, you know, that don't make sense. So to me the basics are there no matter what I write, and I just love to write.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Talking about writing then, um, and you were nice, I sent me uh a copy of this book recently. Haven't gotten to read this one yet, but great title again, knock open the door. And by the way, let me ask you too, when you come up, when you write a book, what comes or a poem, what comes first? The the book itself, what is the title?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Um interesting. I guess with me, my history's been pretty much the title comes first. In other words, I there's there's an inspiration and and that inspiration revolves around a theme, okay? And so that gives me the title, the title comes or the theme comes, and then I tweak it as we go along.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

So uh the reason I ask interesting, again, kind of an interesting title. And by the way, did your son do the cover for this as well?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yes, he did, excellent. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Okay, we'll give him a shout-out. So knock open the door, where'd you come up with the idea for this book?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Uh, you know, I guess that book was pretty easy to write because that book, 50% of that book, contains letters that I've written over the past the course of the past year to various world leaders, to people like uh Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett and I mean just whoever. These uh these people we all well know know well, and I've been telling them that it's time for two things. One, for the people to rule the planet, not the leaders, not the governments, but for the people to actually run things. Now we need to do that through an organization. I understand that, and we call that politics, but the state of uh politics today is abysmal around the world, not just in the US. In fact, the U.S. is defined as quote unquote a flawed democracy. Not even a democracy, a flawed democracy. So anyway, half the book contains those letters. The other half of the book contains what I felt uh, and I'll I'll I admit, I admit in the book, Chat GBT helped me with the structure, a little bit of the outline for this, and that is a constitution that is from the people, by the people, for world, for the world to get its act together.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Now talk about then this book in terms of writing the letters. So, two questions. One, how'd you get the addresses for the people?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

That's easy. Chat GBT or Google gives you all the all the addresses, the email addresses, the physical mail addresses, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Do you send the letters email or physical?

SPEAKER_00 31:29

I send them both.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Okay, because I I tell people in general, you have a s a much better chance in general to writing anybody if you send them a personal handwritten note as opposed to an email. And so out of all the letters we've written, so how many letters in this book alone, how many letters are there approximately?

SPEAKER_00 31:49

I would say there's at least uh 30 some.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Okay. Out of the 30 you write, uh, did you get any uh answers?

SPEAKER_00 31:57

I did. I got some nice responses. You know, what you get when you write to people like this, you don't get personal answers, of course, because it's not a personal letter. You know, leaders and and people in these positions don't look at what we write them as a personal letter. They look at it as, well, you're writing, you're writing to me in this position.

unknown 32:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

You're not writing to me as Joe Blow, you know, your neighbor next door. You're writing to me in this position. So therefore, they let quote unquote their organization handle your letter and your response to it. Um, you know, you generally speaking, these days, what these people uh respond to only is a mass of letters. If they get a thousand or ten thousand on one subject, they're gonna react. They may look deeper into it and they may take some action. Um so the chances of one letter getting through their uh their response system, their all generated automatic response system of handling people's letters uh is very few. However, I wrote the book and I included those letters because, quite frankly, I don't think there's any more important subject in the world today, not even the environment, as bad as it is, except for achieving a permanent world peace.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Yet, as you talk about it, I'll mention an idea that I would share with my students, and I still tell people this, that if you want to get a response, write, first of all, handwriting or type it, whatever you do, but also tie into something that either asks a question or an their interest, aside from world peace. But I don't know if you've ever done this, Rod, but if I write a I read a nonfiction book, half the time I'll write a letter to the author, and I'd say maybe half of that time I'll get a response, you know, because people don't write. I I'll ask you as an example. Do you ever get letters from people who read your books?

SPEAKER_00 34:20

No, I have not actually.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Okay. And so one thing I tell people, I'll I'll put you on the spot to see if I see it, and most people don't do this. I always contend, and the and you can share this with your authors, on the last page of the book, they should put a contact information, you know. So they they can go through the publisher, of course, they can try, but you want to make it easier for people. Tell people, I'd love to hear from you, drop me a note, you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

That's true. You are right about that.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

But it's just kind of a fun thing to get a response, you know, from somebody. You don't get a lot of responses, but when you do, it's very, very exciting. You know, that something takes time and effort. But you can spawn on.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

But that's you and me, Blaine. Right. That you and me are her her individuals, we're in a very small world. Okay, so yes, it's very but to these people who are getting thousands of letters, it's not it's not meaningful. You know what's meaningful to them is uh if somebody they know calls them, oh, they'll answer the you you see what I'm saying? Uh it's quite different, and so how we approach them has to be quite different.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

And you give a good great example of it when you're talking about the um Diamond Girl, the the story behind that, you know, that Bob got a personal response because he wrote them, it was a personal nature, and to actually come meet him, that was pretty exciting, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

They responded.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

So it does happen, and you know it because you've done it hundreds of times.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Well, as a kid, same thing too. I write letters. I got I got it from my grandfather. He always wrote letters. I always remembered it, uh, Rod, that he would write a letter to a restaurant if you like the food, and they would put it up in a frame on their wall, and it always made an impact on me. And to this day, I still do that, you know. Um it's kind of a nice nice thing to say to somebody, I I recognize you or I appreciate you. Yes. I I don't know about you, Bob, but I can tell you also it's easy to bitch about world peace, you name a topic, right? You can complain all you want, but for every complaint letter you write or bitch letter, you have to write 10 positive ones, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

So it's well, you know, I I even recommend in the book, don't even bother, do not write those bitch letters, do not write letters that say, I demand you do this, I demand, because immediately, hey, if I got that letter, I'd throw it out. I would throw it into garbage. Why would I pay attention to that? No, what we need to do though is to agree on something that is positive and that will result in something positive. In other words, if you write somebody and say, I'm complaining about this, however, you know, a possible solution might be if you did blah, blah, blah, well, guess what? You'll get more attention. I mean, we we need to come up with the solutions, not just complain and bitch about the problems.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

The spin on this was my favorite politician. I don't know if you ever heard of him, a guy by the name of Alard Lowenstein. And he would he led the um, he was my first congressman as a kid, and he led the uh Dump Johnson movement. But what so impressed me about him, uh Rod, is he would run public forums and on, for example, abortion when it's a very hot topic, and he would get people to come to an agreement on certain things, you know. So rather than fight and say you're a jerk all the time, what can we agree to? And I just always was impressed by that to get people in the same wavelength, but find full fault with the person all the time.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

And that that fits exactly into what you taught me as a court mediator all those years ago, to find some points of agreement between these two disputing parties, you know, so that we could maybe maybe get to some point where we can put the dispute behind us and move forward.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

It's funny you still remember that, yeah. And the whole got uh the whole idea, especially neighborhood disputes, was to um be able to get along with your neighbor and still be friendly with them, not fight them all these years. It's funny things you remember. Thank you for sharing that. Rod, let me ask you this. So you have nine books down. Um what's next for Rodrigs?

SPEAKER_00 39:00

What's next? Well, actually, what's next is I'm gonna be spending the next uh probably at least six months um promoting this idea that you know we need to not just talk about, not just think about uh we need to take action to achieve a permanent world peace now. So I've s I'm um creating a website as we speak tomorrow uh or the next day it'll be going up called Peace by 2030. And uh that is a campaign um that that I'm gonna be pushing. I'm gonna be following up with all these people I wrote letters to in my book, and I'm gonna be sending them copies of my book and uh uh uh another letter, and uh this one perhaps a little bit more um compelling, and um try to get this idea out because we can do it. It's not like we can't do it, we can do it if we can unite and what um cut up a tree that's falling across the road and get it out of the way so we can get the cars. If we can do stuff like that, you know what? We can achieve world peace. The thing is, we do millions of things every day to take care of people, right? And it's all about taking care of people. Well, that's the most important thing, because if if we can't ensure a a world peace, we're never we're never gonna make it.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

On that, um, Rod, uh down the road, let's do another show on that, or when you get the website off the ground, you get this off the ground. Love to talk to you more about that. But let me ask you this in terms of the um book and and this project by 2030, do you get one run for office?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Well, you know, that's a very interesting thing. You know, I know, all your listeners know, unfortunately, and it was this way before uh the the current political situation. Politics has always been, unfortunately, divisive. One side says this, the other side opposes, blah, blah, blah, goes back and forth. You know, there was a time in this country when we actually had consensus, when Congress agreed to pass Medicare and Social Security and programs that meant a difference. You know, we have a Congress, we can do it when we have to. But those days are far and far long gone, essentially. And that and this is not just happening here, it's around the world because of this disunifying force. Um, and uh, we that's what part of uh world peace means is learning how to cooperate again, much like mediation taught me how to get two parties in a room and help them learn to cooperate and stop fighting.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Rod, if anybody wants to get in touch with you for one a bunch of reasons. First of all, find out about your books. What's best bet to find out about your books?

SPEAKER_00 42:50

You can Google me, Rodney Richards, just put it in Google and some things will come up and you'll be able to contact me. Contact me by email 1950 ablia at gmail.com 1950 abilia at gmail.com. Or I have a current website, just Rodney Richards.info, and um I'll be having uh more things uh coming out soon.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Okay, if I go there, will they also find all your books? Okay, so anyway, Rodney, as always, pleasure to speak to you. And uh hopefully, I don't know when I'll be up in your neck of the woods, but maybe we'll get you to come to North Carolina one of these days.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

I you know, I'm going down to New Orleans uh next month, so uh you never know. One of these days, I'm traveling. I already made a cross-country trip from Route 66 and came back. Uh that took 13 days, so I'm I'm raring to go.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

I remember that trip, and that was in that that was in your first book, right? Or the memoir.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

No, no, no. That was recent. That was just that was very recent.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Oh, because in your memoir too, you talked about a trip you also went just on your own. You packed up one day and went to was it India?

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Oh, I went to I went to uh Israel, the Holy Land, and uh yeah, had some experiences there, yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Anyway, Rod, as always a pleasure, and I look forward to hopefully one of these days bumping into you.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

And thank you very much for seeing me and listening to me and uh being such a good friend all these years, Blaine. I appreciate it. You're doing great things.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Okay, it's always a pleasure. Speak to you soon, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

All right, bye.