September 26, 2022
Good morning! Sound the shofar… it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Eat apfels and honey — anticipating a sweet year ahead, a good year ahead, one never better. It’s also beginning to look a lot like All Hallow’s Eve!
Anticipation much? How about apfel pie season — and Oktoberfest first?
I guess they all sort of blur and blend together; enjoy a punkin doughnut.
How about we be done already with the season of hyperbolic political advertisements?!?
Someone is chasing Roger Maris’ (Maris’s?) — pride of North Dakotah — record.
- Went for a long walk in the rain and cold wind Friday afternoon; gawd did it feel good!
- Beautiful weather can significantly buoy your spirits.
- On a long drive last week to see a client I was treated to the unanticipated perquisite of stunning autumn colors — under crisp morning skies and a golden sun.
All Leaders Must Have a Vision
- It is the sacred responsibility of ALL top leaders of organizations — big, medium, and small — to have a VISION.
- A vision imagines that which doesn’t yet exist, but which is reasonably achievable.
- A vision should have both logical and emotional appeal — it should be briefly and poignantly stated, easily communicated.
- When others hear it or read it they should be moved to action, emotionally charged, motivated to contribute.
- A vision shines a bright light on the path ahead, though onerous still exciting.
- Without a vision the people perish. (Habiger)
- There are tens of thousands of worthy historians — starting with Herodotus — but is there anyone who has brought history to life in a way more meaningful than Ken Burns?
- Ken’s latest, The United States and the Holocaust, takes us on a decade-long journey detailing the unthinkable escalating behaviour of the Germans contrasted with the (non)reaction of the United States and other allied nations; it’s sobering, though that’s insufficient vocabulary.
- Perhaps most haunting from all the footage was the statement, “Hitler accomplished his goal… ” Chilling.
- The word, genocide, had not yet been invented.
- What many of us forget is Hitler would have been nothing more than blubbering impotent rhetoric had it not been for the millions who agreed with him — and worked on his behalf.
- That’s what should scare us most.
- Rotary International, a worldwide association of 1.2 million business and professional leaders representative of 200 countries, works toward peace as one of its strategic imperatives.
- Rotary had a seat at the table when the United Nations was formed and now it operates Centers for Peace and Conflict Resolution in several locations around the globe.
- Since the mid-1980s it has dedicated billions to eradicate polio from the face of the earth… and has almost succeeded, almost.
- Partnering with many distinguished scholars, Rotary’s Eight Pillars of Peace offer a lighted path toward a better world:
- Sound Business Environment
- Well-Functioning Governments
- Equitable Distribution of Resources
- Free Flow of Information
- Good Relations with Neighbors
- High Levels of Human Capital
- Acceptance of the Rights of Others
- Low Levels of Corruption
- Partnering with many distinguished scholars, Rotary’s Eight Pillars of Peace offer a lighted path toward a better world:
- What are you reading?
- Loaned to me by a friend and faithful reader of these Musings, this is a genre to which I wouldn’t naturally be attracted.
- It’s never too late to read last year’s masterpieces.
- Miller’s The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (Little Brown, 2021) gifts you with prose that at times dances on the page at the telling of an intoxicating story.
- “Take great care to not wake up in your own museum.” (Birkenstock)
