View From Here

 My daughter and family (husband and two daughters) flew off to Portland, Oregon a couple of weeks or so ago. They called the next day to report the family had COVID and wondered what next they should do. Quarantined to the hotel, they had airline tickets to return home by the end of the week. They could not use them. They could not go out and about due to the quarantine, so what could they do? I suggested grabbing their laptop (yes every modern family travels with their laptop!) and research their options. They learned they could rent a car and drive the 2000 miles home. That’s what they did. An impromptu family road trip. They saw Oregon from a car, then Washington state in all of its diverse beauty, then Idaho and the Rockies, then into Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. They saw landscapes they had never experienced. Although sick, they still enjoyed each other’s company and the experiences offered by road travel. Their youngest daughter, K...

They keep mounting. Freedoms lost so others can exercise their freedoms. The haves and have nots, played in another key. Let’s make a list. 1.        Women’s choice to live in their own bodies fully, to have kids or not; to engage in sex or not; to abort a fetus when practical (health, finances, mental health, fetus health and/or disability; many others) 2.        Freedom from violence so others can own and use guns as they see fit; oh yes, there are laws to the contrary, but they are gutless and unenforceable intentionally 3.        Reading the books that matter to you because ideologues think you cannot handle the content; they know it well enough to ban it? How did that come to be? Why is a book OK in one era but not in a later one, or vice versa? 4.        Clothing choices in schools. School boards censor what kids wear, how they wear their hair, and so for...

Several of women clients have recently talked about the discrimination they have felt over the years. Most of this has been subtle, very subtle. But it is there, and they ‘see’ it clearly. Minorities? Ethnicity? You know discrimination big time. How about sexual orientation? Transgender youth? Questioning youth?  Kids feel it too. Fluff up memories of your early days. Do you recall people shunting you aside because you were young, too inexperienced to have an opinion on anything? I do. Bet you do too. And age discrimination? A sure bet these days. Oh, we are respected, but we are also discounted heavily. It is stunning to recognize the dismissal. Ugly? Ho-hum looks? You feel the interest or lack thereof. You know in your bones that someone is avoiding you. Not interested in conversing. No need to associate with you. Move on to something or someone more interesting than you. Dress differently? Noticed? Or shunned? Gay or straight? Well, the gay part is a definite cause for...

I will say it again and again, while public media touts the horrors of the day continually, the rest of us are going about our business. Some of that business is actual commercial business, while others engage in nonprofit, community-oriented business. Still others are consumed with household chores, family needs, and the love of and for pets. You know, the routines of life we all know. As wars wage, peace struggles, and woes faced, we still build, make, cook, ponder, create and engage the arts. So many things to do. So much needed by others. There is an army of souls who do the community projects and good works. There are platoons of volunteers for each project. There are those who donate the goods and the money to make those volunteers productive with needed materials and equipment. Yes, the world of good continues. We are blessed. Often, I wonder how each of us makes a difference in life. How each of us carry on despite wars, inflation, economic turmoil, and supply chain inter...

I don’t know if such a thing exists. But I have lived in an area that has been remarkably protected from storm damage. For 28 years. In the western suburbs of Chicago. To be precise, the town is Warrenville, Illinois, about 28 air miles west of downtown Chicago. Warrenville is north of Naperville, west of Wheaton, south of West Chicago and just east of Fermilab. That site is the atom smasher where proton beams were first found. They focused on neutron beams but discovered proton beams which have since been harnessed to cancel certain cancers. The original atom smasher (cyclotron) was shut down years ago but was replaced by a particle beam accelerator which shoots atoms in a straight line below the earth’s surface; it travels toward a target site on the surface of the earth thousands of miles away. The beam goes through everything, steel, concrete, granite, you name it. There is a folklore tale that claims that all or most weather fronts are interrupted by the mysterious force tha...

And so its goes, one task after another. To bed early, arise early. In between many to-do’s. Making bed, making coffee, posting the blog, read Facebook incoming; comment and some; then move on to news gathering. Finally, I visit some favored websites then turn to the SCORE tasks of the day. What is on the calendar? Who am I working with today? Pull together the last notes on the session and review what is likely next to discuss. Then off to the kitchen to rinse out the coffee pot and cup. Next stop is pulling out clothes to wear for the day, then into the bathroom for shaving, meds, teeth brushing and shower. After all that, back to the computer to start the day with clients. If I have time, I write a blog for the next day, maybe think about topics to write about after that. If more time is available, I pick up my latest book read and plop into my recliner for a chapter or two or three. Watching the clock, I return to the computer for my appointments and sign on to Zoom. I review m...

Priorities for US : Survival is priority one for any nation, ours included. So, it is understandable that we engage in foreign affairs and military preparedness at the same time. However, survival also requires a focus on our planet’s health, its ability to continue to support human life. Global Warming is the issue that will dictate our future. It should be engaged internally and with other nations. Time is running out on this issue. Meanwhile, what do we do? We argue about politics, ideologies, political districting maps, voter fraud, abortion, gay marriage all the while allowing gun violence to consume our country. What does this say about our priorities? And what does it say about our governance structures when legislatures and Congress cannot get their work done because they are playing cat and mouse with issues that are of lower priority? It says much about our maturity. It says much about our collective intelligence.  Global Priorities : Global warming is real. This ...

Economics is a system of actions, policies and things of value interacting with one another in a highly variable context. It is a continuum of these actions. One small bit may cause an effect, which then leads to a result, both of which may cause other effects and results. It is chaos theory in full view. No one thing is a fault line for all the others. Also, no one person is the bearer of fault. Yes, wrong turns do happen. Yes, people are the actors who cause a stream of effects to result from those wrong turns. But ever has this been true. What is also true is the befuddlement and non-understanding of how the economy works. Most people share this non-understanding. They don’t think this is true, but just because they are players in the economy and are feeling the effects of the economy, does not make them a keen expert on the economy. For most economists, there are other economists who disagree with you. Case in point are the fans of Milton Friedman and those of Maynard Keynes....

Abu Ghraib versus Khashoggi murder : Saudi Prince MBS claims Biden’s reference to MBS’ role in the Khashoggi murder is a tit for tat value swap for what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of US soldiers. What nonsense that is. First of all, MBS is alleged to have called the shots in every aspect of killing Khashoggi. Hit men were dispatched to eliminate Khashoggi so his social commentary critical of MBS and his regime were silenced. Political. Murder. Hiding truth. Manipulating a nation’s will to one man’s perspective, for his own gain. Second, Abu Ghraib was a bunch of military jerks who ignorantly abused and bullied prisoners assigned to them. In war time, these men allowed their disgust of the enemy to become threatening and demeaning treatment of the prisoners. This was not policy. This was not ordered by any US authority. This was stupid behavior that embarrassed America. No doubt Saudi Arabia resents America in many ways. Too bad that is the case. But adult mi...

I am a fan of Bill Gates. He has proven again and again that he is an altruist. For those not familiar with the term, it means someone who looks for the good in life and works to solve the big problems. Many people think rich people are selfish. They think greed got them their riches. That may be true in many cases, but not, I think, with Bill Gates. He made money the old-fashioned way: he not only built a better mousetrap but invented the thing. Personal computing was not much of anything. Geeks, maybe. Science nerds looking for better methods to crunch large numbers and do so from their own desk, found a way to build the internet. That was a research source built to share information and research reports. Mostly the internet was used by universities and government agencies using each other’s data to push forward the boundaries of society’s knowledge. Accessing this from smaller, individual computers was a dream of many. Bill Gates made it possible. He shared much of his informa...

The instant example of polling shortfalls is the current measurement of polls focused on President Biden’s popularity. Polling results are affected by many factors. Popularity is the primary one. Biden is president at a very bad time. Global warming clouds our future. Some believe this is true while a huge minority believes otherwise. To them it is a political issue and ideological. Gun violence is another hot topic. Is the answer gun control? Oh, don’t raise that question, it is one hot political topic that buries both the pro and the con positions. Inflation is another issue that perplexes the people. Who is responsible for this? How can it be controlled? Why haven’t we done something about it? And so it goes. So many topics. So many opinions. And yet, the facts are otherwise, aren’t they? A President of the USA may have a lot of power, but making law is not one of them. Congress does that. Deciding if the law is good and correct, is the job of the court system, not the Preside...

So many ways to see and encounter power. Manipulate, too. Let us take a quick look at some of these. Plugging an appliance into a electrical socket is taken for granted. All my life this has been true. Plug it in and switch it on. The light comes on, or the stereo, TV, fan or radio. Bigger plugs meant stoves of course, but refrigerators and air conditioners were still plug-ins. Walk into a room and flick the switch; lights came on, still do. Or will they? Our nation invested billions and billions in dams, pumps, hydroelectric facilities and a whole lot more to create power for tens of millions of people. Whole rivers were rerouted or dammed to create water levels that would be used to create electric power. The problem with that scenario is what happens when the water level is insufficient? That’s what America faces these days and the greater southwest is in one of its longest and driest droughts. Water supply to the people is a huge concern but think of the problems that will oc...

A lot of new jobs are emerging. 372,000 last month (June 2022). Some companies are reducing staff. How can both be happening at the same time? Because…let us see. First, we have said in this space many times before, the pandemic caused massive unemployment. Remember when 22 million jobs were idled in the early months of the pandemic? Well, it happened. Many of those jobs came back a few months later, while many jobs were lost forever. The latter happened because the pandemic demonstrated how working from home had great results when none were expected. Online work soared and proved itself highly productive. Overhead costs plummeted at the same time. employers pivoted to cut costs, improve productivity and redesign business processes. Emergent jobs were partly the result, but new technology demanded new job skills. The previous workers were not as adaptable as new, younger folks who already had the mindset of the new technology. Old career patterns ebbed while newer ones grew exponen...

Fair Compensation : work from home? Travel required, lots of it? Working with the public directly? Outdoor or indoor work sites?  Many jobs do not require face to face meetings or close proximity in an office setting. Phones, yes. Computers, yes. Zoom and other electronic ‘meetings’, yes. Many jobs require great amounts of travel as regions are covered by sales representatives and product demonstrators. Building personal relationships with customers, clients and consultees, means much personal attention, a lot of it in-person. Salespeople have outputs upon which they are compensated. Salary plus commission is common. Same is true for sales support people who labor from home covering large regions and nationally assigned representatives. Their outcomes are measured in calling stats, customers served, order volume and sales volumes. They are often compensated with salary and commission. Other folks working from home are paid by ‘the piece’, that is, items sold, subscriptions writte...

I understand political opposition. I realize that competing parties will badmouth competition to persuade others to their side. Like the playground kids, the arguments are persuasive only in the power tactics used. Some would term this bullying; and I would agree. Surely the logic is not persuasive, none is given in such settings. However, reasonable people will eventually settle into comfortable chairs and discuss the problem, its dimensions and reach, and possible solutions that could be applied. The discussion needs to be multi-dimensional. Shared thoughts, expertise and organizational skills are needed to craft workable solutions. This is collaboration. If the parties to this discussion are all from one political party or power source, the solutions will most likely be unworkable to those from another camp of thought. This describes America today. If the idea comes from ‘our group, it must be good.’ If not, it is highly suspect. When Katrina hit the gulf coast several years b...

Divisions among the body politic are part of democracy. The pluses and minuses of issues are the grist of discussion most of the time. Working out differences is a function of compromise. That is not an easy process to master. Our nation’s history is a constant reminder of this very fact. But compromise we must do. That is the only way we move ahead, survive the times, struggle to improve our lot. The body politic decides this daily. Sometimes the process is orderly and timely. Most of the time it is disorderly and slow to form. Solutions are often too few, too late, and not up to the job. Our social order has valued education. To that end we have created schools, classrooms, curricula and professional teaching standards. We have created an advancement protocol stemming from pre-school through high school. Post-secondary education emerged a very long time ago. The European standard was adopted in America. We have tweaked it many times to a much higher standard we see today. Colle...

Mitch stated that he thought the job market will balance out as soon as the people spend their stimulus checks. He thinks they are sitting home not working because they have plenty of free money! I think Mitch is delusional. By my calculations those dollars were spent at least a year ago. People are not going back to work as normal because of these reasons: 1.        The jobs available are not the old ones. They are new ones requiring a totally different set of skillsets. The unemployed who were let go involuntarily, will need new career preparation to be hired for the new jobs. 2.        Employers want people to return to central working sites. For manufacturing and direct, personal services (restaurants, medical clinics, etc.), place is where the jobs are. For many other jobs, place is home where productivity and telecommunication devices reign supreme. The work is done better and cheaper without all the fuss of confere...

Looking out the window. Observing a cloudless sky. Blue. Deep blue and deepening. Trees, green and billowy. Moving slightly in the early morning breeze. Gentle day aborning. The promise of good moments, maybe hours ahead. Life challenges beg attention. Relationships, too, require tending, nurturing. Time is spent on many of these each day, some simultaneously. We settle some things, solve others, yet remain challenged by so many remaining. We talk of them. With others. Some are friends and family. Sharing the mysteries and problems for support. But also inputs for crafting solutions. Just meandering thoughts. Maybe some of them will be the answer. Searching for answers. Connecting with others who know more about the specific issue under study. Reading. Researching. Writing and testing understandings of the problem. What we know and what we don’t know. Often more important, crystalizing what it is we don’t know. That sparks more research. More exploration. Discovery comes from the...

I hope others respect me enough to treat me as they would like to be treated. That means, if you don’t agree with me, just let the disagreement be. Don’t fight it with insulting language or shunning, or nastiness. Just let it be something you disagree with. The other person is not harming you with his/her opinion/belief. It just is. I like a good discussion on topics that matter. It is good exercise for the brain. But it is also exercise in restraint of feelings. Disagreement should not mean anger, frustration, revenge or any other emotion that could lead to regrettable behavior, action. A good discussion peels away the logic of an opinion so you can understand what the other person means by their position, and helps you understand how they came to believe as they do. Who knows, it may change your mind on the topic. At least it should help you accept that person’s effort to understand the issue. You may also learn how to discuss the topic in a way that might change someone’s opinio...

Celebrations today should be tempered by recent losses of Constitutional protection of many classes of US citizens – women, immigrants, gays and transgenders, and indigenous Indians. Threats to the public at large also now go mostly unprotected – clean air, clean water, clean soil; runaway gun violence culture; equal access to justice; freedom from religion. When independence was championed in the 1770’s, the idea was to break away from English rule and king. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness had yet to be defined, but the grand objective was claimed in the Declaration of Independence. It took nearly 12 years for the ‘founding fathers’ to codify and define the details in the US Constitution. That document went through many drafts and compromises to become the spinal column of American law and governance. Even then it was not right. Amendments were written and adopted through much work and anguished debates. The Bill of Rights was one such amendment. This is where so many ‘ri...

What is a stakeholder? A simple definition – A person or organization that needs you and/or your organization to be successful. Your success will help their success. That’s it. Simple. Instead of ‘you’ or ‘organization’, substitute company, charity, government, nation, state, etc.   A few examples might be helpful. If a nonprofit has a mission to improve quality of early childhood development in their community, they will need the following resources to help them build a success program: funding, leadership, networking with community leaders to help define the problem and its logistical limits, volunteers to share the workload, and much more. People in that same community need the program to be successful for helping kids get quality support for their full, positive development. That is always a good thing. Those who benefit from a success program in this area are local schools; other local charities working in family and educational arenas; churches; local businesses; corpor...