Stephen King and the Classics

For the last year of so I've been trying to tackle some of the classics I never read as a kid, but always felt like I should have. I've started Moby Dick, The Odyssey, and The Brothers Karamazov and according to my Kindle I've finished 66%, 36% and 11%, respectively. I just can't get into them. Meanwhile, I downloaded It yesterday and can't put it down. I've read at least a dozen Stephen King novels over the years and loved the 90's It miniseries with Tim Curry as Pennywise. There are too many books and life if too short to waste time plodding through pages you don't find particularly entertaining or enlightening. So I am sticking with Stephen for now.

Send a letter. The Post Office

My last summer in college, my roommate and I drove from Athens, Georgia to Alaska, with many interesting stops in between. Those stories are another blog for another day. While we were there, the local post office was our connection back to home.

We worked at a fish processing plant on the Kenai Peninsula, three hours south of Anchorage for six weeks that summer. This was pre-technology and collect calls back home were rare and expensive, so we took advantage of general delivery at the local Kasilof, Alaska post office. We could get letters and care packages from friends and family back home, even though our “address” was an open field near the river down the hill from the fish camp. Once a week or so, we’d walk or drive or hitch hike up to the post office to see what had come in. I’ve added a picture of the post office and it has not changed much in the last 27 years.  

The US Post office is amazing. For 49 cents, 34 cents for a postcard, you can get a letter from one end of the country to the other. Even overseas if you are writing to service-members or other Americans serving abroad. Last year the USPS delivered 61 billion pieces of first class mail, down from a peak of 103 billion in 2001. I don’t know what their success rate is but I have to guess it’s pretty high. I can’t recall of a single piece of mail I know of being lost, either personally or professionally, as sender or receiver. On one trip I mailed a card home and it still got here, even though I forgot to put a stamp on it. I got a letter from my son when he was on vacation, addressed in faint, 12-year-old boy chicken-scratch print. It still made it.

In a time when most of us spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for all our constantly available digital communicating technology, the USPS and the letters they deliver every year are remarkable for their value, reliability and simplicity. We’ll probably never write as many letters as we used to but maybe the decline is slowing and we’ll see letter writing make a return. I hope so.

#sendaletter

Send a letter. Postcards from Cuba

I love to get mail. The other day I got this postcard from my niece who was on one of the first cruise ships to visit Cuba after travel restrictions were lifted. Today I got a letter in the mail this afternoon from my daughter who is off at college. There is nothing like getting a hand-written, addressed, and stamped letter that someone took the time and the effort to send to you. Emails, texts and the like may be immediate, but there is a greater sense of permanence to the physical that gets stronger even as it becomes rarer.

In business, a hand-written thank you note to a prospective customer or a newly established contact in your network makes you less forgettable. If you are interviewing, it makes you stand out from other applicants and may help some minor hiccups fade away. I know there have been several occasions where I had a follow up interview with an applicant largely because I received a personal thank you note in the mail a couple of days later.

For family and friends, it’s a nice, completely out of the blue reminder to someone that you are thinking about them. This is especially true for our older generations who, even though they may be very comfortable with current technology, still enjoy receiving a postcard or letter in the mail. Several years ago I started sending postcards to homebound members at our church when I traveled for work. I would regularly get notes and comments from them or their family members, even the ones who weren’t able to take calls or visitors. And of course, a condolence card is always appropriate. I received dozens when mom passed away and I still have them and look at them from time to time.

So write a card or a letter. It just takes a few minutes. It will make you more memorable, you’ll feel good when you drop it in the mailbox, and it’s sure to brighten a day on the other end.

#sendaletter

That's not pro-life

A few recent events:

• Congress fails to renew the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) putting health insurance for 9 million low income kids at risk. 
• 59 dead in a mass shooting in Las Vegas followed by the predictable silence combined with a defense of the everyone’s right to own 43 guns by the Republicans.
• The president threatening to cut off aid to Puerto Rico out because his feeling were apparently hurt by the mayor of San Juan. The island is still largely without power and drinking water and reports of disease are starting to spread.
• Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue yesterday floated the idea of cutting working people from food stamps. 
• And in the last 24 hours, actions by Trump to destabilize the (admittedly flawed) Obamacare market will likely cause millions to lose coverage and access to healthcare when subsidies are cancelled. Various estimates from the CBO and the New England Journal of Medicine estimate between 26,000 and 96,00 deaths due to the loss of insurance coverage. 

This administration and the Republican Party have long claimed to be the “pro-life” party. These are not “pro-life” positions. Pro-life means access to health-care and prenatal care. It means living wages and drug treatment programs and an end to mass incarceration so families can stay together. Pro-life means working through diplomacy vs. intentionally agitating an unstable despot with war mongering rhetoric. I’ll leave it for the reader to decide if I am referring to Trump of Kim Jong-Un. It means ensuring access to education, nutrition, and clean air and water. It means reasonable controls on access to guns. And it means welcoming victims of war and famine sanctuary and safety in our country. Pro-life means honoring the basic dignity in all people.

This administration and the GOP congress claim to be pro-life, but their actions belie their words. Saying it doesn't make it so. 

My Latest Airbnb Trip

I had the pleasure of chaperoning a group of about 70 high school theater students to NYC over Fall Break. We had a fantastic five days in the Big Apple and for many of the kids it was the trip of a lifetime.

The way the hotel situation worked out, I ended up not staying with the group at the Marriott in Times Square, but rather at an Airbnb in Hell’s Kitchen, a couple of blocks away.

I love staying at Airbnb. It represents the very best of the sharing economy. A host has a resource (space in their home) that’s underutilized. The guest is looking for space that meets their needs. In my case, a reasonably priced room close to where my group was staying. The technology allows me to know everything I needed to about the space ahead of time. Small room. Great bed. Wi-Fi, coffee maker and access to the kitchen. No kids, no pets, no parties. Multiple 5-star reviews.

My total cost for four nights with a room to myself was only slightly more than the cost of one night at the Marriott, and I had my room to myself, which was a nice sanity break after a day of chasing four girls around Manhattan. I wasn’t paying for a fancy lobby or a bar with $9 beers that served Pepsi (no Coke). I am a big Airbnb fan, needless to say.

If you’ve never stayed there, give it a shot. In Manhattan there are hundreds if not thousands of rooms available ranging from $50ish per night for a hostel type room to well over $1,000 for a full apartment.

There are a few things you should consider:

• ·       Do they have Wi-Fi? Most do.
• ·       If you are traveling for work, do they have a good workspace. The first one I stayed in did not, the second one had a great standing desk and a 29” monitor for me to plug in to.
• ·       What are the host’s hours? If they are the opposite of yours it could be a problem.
• ·       Communicate with the host. Let them know when you expect to arrive and if any issues come up.
• ·       Be sure to check the cancellation policy. Some require you to forfeit half your stay if you cancel, even weeks out.
• ·       Be nice and leave the room in good shape. Remember, they are rating you too.

Last, you have to roll with it. There will almost always be something quirky that comes up, but if you are flexible and open minded, Airbnb is a way to get a cheap place to stay, meet some new friends and have a good story to tell.

#waveon

Vegas

Once again we have the gun crowd telling us not to politicize the latest worst mass shooting in US history. We heard it after the last worst mass shooting in US history and we’ll hear it again after the next worst mass shooting in US history.

For my friends that don’t speak NRA gibberish, allow me to provide some translation.

·       Now is not the time to politicize this tragedy. Translation: shut up for a few days until people lose interest.

·       My thoughts and prayers are with the victims. Translation: this sounds good, but I’m not going to do anything.

But here’s the thing. We need to politicize the latest shooting. Now. And we need to keep doing it until our political class takes notice and chooses to do something.

And it’s not “too soon”. Did you ever notice how it’s always too soon after a shooting? It’s always too soon for the people who don’t want anything to change. In many cases these are the politicians who are in the pocket of the NRA. They spent $52 million on the 2016 election, $30 million on Trump alone. That buys plenty of empty “thoughts and prayers” and lots of doing nothing.

For those that think that the piles of bodies are just the “price of freedom”. That’s pure stupidity. Many countries are free and none of them allow anything close to the carnage that we tolerate every day.

This problem is not hard to solve. We simply lack the will. Random ideas that will enrage the gun crowd.

·       Register firearms and track the sales. The latest guy apparently has 23 guns in his room and 19 more at his home and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Likely all purchased legally, since apparently he was a “good guy” until Sunday night. If my neighbor decides to amass that stockpile I have a right to know. Full stop. And law enforcement should know and if you are one of those folks that thinks you need to be able have all this to keep the government from trampling on your rights (i.e., you may need to stage your own personal armed rebellion), well to hell with you.

·       Require registration of guns currently in private possession. Don’t like it? See above. After the registration period, if the gun isn’t registered, by definition it’s illegal.

·       Bring back the prior assault weapons (don’t bore me with your hair splitting about what constitutes an “assault weapon”) ban and throw out high capacity magazines while you are at it.

·       Require full background checks on all firearms sales and transfers. No exceptions (and yes, there are loopholes).

·       Bring back waiting periods.

·       Use the registration mentioned above to ensure that people with charges/convictions for violent crimes or mental illness have their guns confiscated or to at least ensure there is awareness of the presence of the weapons in the home.

·       No doubt there are countless other things we can do that would make a difference. None are a silver bullet individually, but collectively they will reduce the body count.

None of this is particularly hard. We just don’t have the will do it and I am sure we won’t this time either. Once we decided that 20 dead first graders at Sandy Hook was not going to cause us to take action, the debate pretty much ended. But we don’t have to tolerate the current situation. Just remember we collectively choose to.

Perfection is not the goal

Right after I got my first supervisory role in 1995 I got this coffee mug with the quote “Perfection is the goal, excellence will be tolerated” printed on it. I bought it for myself at Successories. Remember that place? I bought it for myself because who in their right mind would buy this for this for their boss? It seemed cool and bad-ass at the time so that was my mug for the next couple of years.

The thing is, this idea makes no sense. Especially when it comes to creative or people or planning work. You can keep tweaking (or futzing as my former boss used to say) creative work forever and delay producing until it doesn’t matter anymore. People, all of us, are hugely flawed, so forget about perfection there. And a plan perfect until the first moment you begin to execute. Then it hits resistance or unexpected variables and you have to improvise, adapt, overcome (thanks Gunny Highway).

So produce, create, deliver. Adjust, adapt and iterate. Don’t let the obsession for perfection get in the way of the excellent, the great, or the pretty darn good.

#waveon