"Don't assume you're always going to be understood," she says. She goes on to tell about a column she wrote in which she said that one should put a cup of liquid in the cavity of a turkey when roasting it. Believe it or not someone wrote her that "the turkey tasted great, but the plastic cup melted." Now she is very careful to say: "POUR a cup of liquid in the cavity of a turkey."

Some problems in communication are humorous; some are tragic. Go back in history with me. The year is 1812. James Madison is our president. Great Britain has several maritime laws on its books that are interfering with U.S. commerce. U. S. anger over these laws is so great that the United States declares war. Later we learn these laws were actually repealed by Great Britain the day before war was declared. But the U.S. had no way of knowing,. because there was no speedy means of communicating that message.

To make matters worse, after two years of fighting, on Christmas Eve, 1814, British and American negotiators concluded the Treaty of Ghent to end the war. Unfortunately there was no way to contact troops in the field. Two weeks later, the British attacked New Orleans, which was defended by a mixed bag of American regulars and volunteers commanded by General Andrew Jackson. The British suffered two thousand casualties and total defeat. The Americans had only a hundred casualties and complete victory, one of their few in the war. The reason the war started after the main grievance had been settled and continued after the peace treaty had been signed was communications. The only way for news to travel was by sea, and the fastest sailing ship could cross the Atlantic in two weeks, but three weeks was more normal and four weeks not unusual, so when the British attacked New Orleans, the peace treaty was still at sea.

How many times has it been said, "What we have here is a communications problem?" Peter Drucker, often called the "Father of American Management," claims that 60 percent of all management problems are a result of faulty communications. A leading marriage counselor says that at least half of all divorces result from faulty communications between spouses. And criminologists tell us that upwards of 90 percent of all criminals have difficulty communicating with other people.

God is the most important one we need to communicate with. May we start today on our knees.

Ron Newhouse