Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…

The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC

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July 22, 2019 – The Tractor Wave

Good morning!
It’s hot! It’s July.
We’ve gained more than an hour of darkness here at this latitude since just one month ago.
Dangit! Why didn’t someone tell me? Yesterday was National Ice Cream Day.

• A family of nighthawks has been noisily launching its young from the top of our TV antenna and nearby telephone poles; fun to watch!
• • Did you enjoy some of the spectacular British Open?
  • • Ooops, it’s not called that anymore… do you know why they changed it?
• For each of the last several years we’ve been incrementally increasing the fortification around our tomato plants after discovering the hundt using them as his schnack cupboard.
• • This year I thought for sure we had an impenetrable fence with stakes deep into the ground every few inches, but…
  • • …just this morning the stupid hundt was caught inside the fence munching away on dozens of the near-ripe delicacies.
    • • How did he do it? He climbed a four-foot fence like a cat — and he’s an older hundt who can’t even successfully hike around the block.
• Not really an acronym per se, the canned faux meat delicacy known as SPAM should more accurately be written as Sp…am — a contraction of spiced ham –
• • –with a slight pause between the sp- and the -am. (Try it out loud.)
  • • So then, please explain how SPAM came to be synonymous with unwanted e-mail messages or junque e-mail?
    • • Spiced ham? Junque mail? From whence did this pejorative come — and is it fair to all concerned?
• Here is a concern about which the mainstream media are doing very little: Windshield glare
• • As a boy on the farm I was taught from a very young age to wave at all passersby, especially when perched on the tractor out in the field.
  • • Nearby or far away when you saw dust kicking up behind a vehicle out on the road you activated your signature wave… and the person almost always waved back.
    • • The dilemma now is what to do because you cannot see who is driving or riding inside most vehicles, the glare from the tinted glass makes it impossible.
      • • So, do you wave just in case, or do you abandon the training received as a youth, thereby being judged as a snoot nose for not waving — or do you mount a campaign to change the tinted glass back to regular glass?
• The very impressive Frankfurt firm, 1789 Innovations AG, uses an exciting if hyperbolic phrase, Exponential Transformation.
• • Think about it, if true, 2+2 is no longer 4, but what is it and what are the consequences?
  • • More wisdom from Frankfurt: “Without a clear strategic direction, any implementation process is doomed to fail.”
    • • Is this perhaps where Without a Vision Consultancy might prove valuable? Maybe indispensable.
• McKinsey recently published data showing a dramatic shift in regional vs. global value chains.
• • For example, as consumption rises, more of what gets made in Asia is sold in Asia instead of being exported to the West.
  • • Twenty-one of the world’s 30 largest cities are in Asia;
    • • More than 40% (>40%) of the world’s 5,000 largest companies are in Asia;
      • • McKinsey predicts fifty percent (50%) of global consumption growth will be in Asia over the next decade.
• This sign was first observed in March 2014 when we were visiting New Prague, MN:
• • “Everyone brings joy to this restaurant — some when they enter, some when they leave.”
• “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” (Socrates)
• Here are the answers to last week’s query: Macao, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Gibraltar
• • Now, if you would prefer countries arguably a bit better known and geographically larger, these would be among those near the top: Bangladesh, Palestine, Lebanon, Taiwan, Aruba, South Korea.

The first draft of this poem was written at the time of my parents’ death in 1992:

Bell in a Tree

By Michael A. Mullin

Listen to the lonely bell,

its chromatic chords whimsically

composed by wisps of wind,

mournful cries for those who died.

A random unpredictable carillon

stilled late at night when breezes rest.

Three forever notes in

a never-ending symphony,

a melancholy melody.

©1992, 2017 Michael A. Mullin

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