I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?

I'll find my way
Through night and day,
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven.

Time can bring you down,
Time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart,
Have you begging please, begging please.

Beyond the door,
There's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.

No other movie can plunge you, so sensuously and so completely, into the forgotten 70s New York of checkered cabs and porno-chic, with all the extraordinary sights and sounds: like that pop-eyed busking drummer with the jet-black hair demonstrating indistinguishable percussion styles to uncaring passers-by. He turns up in my dreams on a pretty regular basis.

I haven't seen Taxi Driver since I was a student, when I used to watch it about once a fortnight. But seeing it again on the big screen showed me how much I'd forgotten and how much I never saw in the first place. Scorsese himself makes two creepy cameo appearances, not one. Paul Schrader's script has one of Travis's cabbie acquaintances making a joke about Bertrand Russell - possibly even in reference to the great anecdote about a London taxi driver asking Russell the meaning of life. That under-remembered political storyline shows the movie's consanguinity with Robert Altman's Nashville and Michael Ritchie's The Candidate and it shows that to the list of everything that has borrowed from Taxi Driver since 1976, we must add TV's The West Wing, whose Josh character is surely derived from Albert Brooks, the nerdy, lovelorn aide.

The main thing I'd forgotten was the extraordinary parody-happy-ending coda, in which Travis does indeed succeed in impressing Cybill Shepherd with his psychotic bloodbath: and frankly it isn't too hard to see how deranged John Hinckley got the message for his own attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. Robert De Niro is almost radioactive with charisma, and the charm and magnetism of his extended dialogue scenes with Shepherd and Foster have a relaxed directness that later he was, sadly, to lose by acquiring repetitious tics and mannerisms. What a mad and brilliant film it is: 1,000-degree proof Seventies cinema.

10 Essential Health Tips
(The Basics to Practice Every Day)

There are 5 key issues that are most important to employees today*

Part 1 - The Problem

Keeping good employees is one of the major problems confronting organizations today. To retain valuable employees, senior management needs to have a good understanding of what is most important to their employees.

Part 2 - The Results and Recommendations

I examined 18 employee opinion studies we conducted during the past 2 years. In each of these studies employees were asked to identify the 10 issues that are most important to them (regardless of their level of satisfaction with the issue). The 5 issues most frequently cited by employees as most important to them are presented below along with strategies for meeting these employee needs.

1) ENJOYMENT OF THE WORK

Employees today want to enjoy the actual work they are performing. They can often withstand highly stressful working environments and uncertainty about the future of their organization if they enjoy their actual work activities such as helping customers, using their creativity, or solving problems.

• Make certain employees have an opportunity to use their valued skills and abilities.
• Continually ask employees if they are enjoying their work assignments.
• Provide employees with more say in how they actually conduct their work.
• Ensure that employees receive the training they need to perform their job well.

Satisfaction with the degree of balance they are able to strike between their work and personal life is also very important to employees today. This is especially true for younger employees. Even the extremely hard-working baby-boomers have reached a point in their lives where they realize that better balance is essential to their psychological health.

• Make work/life balance a recognized organizational value.
• Management should try to serve as role models for work/life balance.
• Reduce organizational inefficiencies that drain employee time and energy.
• Provide employees with scheduling flexibility.

Employees today still view pay as very important. They want to be paid fairly compared to others performing similar work in other organizations.

• Establish and communicate the organization's pay philosophy.
• Conduct salary surveys to make certain the pay levels are appropriate.
• Eliminate clear internal pay inequities.
• Carefully script the messages supervisors transmit to employees about pay.

• Eliminate across-the-board increases.
• Make sure performance reviews are conducted.
• Don't tolerate ineffective performers.
• Use other types of rewards for good performers as well, such as recognition, opportunities for training, and interesting work assignments.

It is important to employees today that their organizations hire and retain enough qualified employees to handle the workload. Downsizing and restructuring has left many organizations with a shortage of qualified workers. This has led to longer working hours, a frenetic work pace, and lower quality service.

• Conduct staffing audits to make certain staffing levels match the workload.
• When appropriate, quickly replace departing employees.
• Develop innovative recruiting methods.

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library.

Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell.

With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like. When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting - 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York.

"You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.

I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:

A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose.

As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, sailor?" she murmured. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat.. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.

I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own. And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her.

This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment.

"I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?"

The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. "I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!"

It's not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom. The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unattractive.

"Tell me whom you love," Houssaye wrote, "And I will tell you who you are."