October 11, 2021
Happy Feast of Thanksgiving to all our family, friends, and readers in Canada. When you have been away from your home or office for a period of time, do you try to catch up on everything that happened while you were away? Or, do you mostly just move forward, reaching back only if you need to? How about the mail? How about e-mail? How about newspapers and magazines? What about the Musings?
What Made Chicago Grand?
- Chicago is my wife’s hometown — and now it’s home to our daughter and her family.
- It’s the sesquicentennial of the Great Chicago Fire (does that warrant upper case?).
- Exactly 150 years ago a fire of still unknown origins started in a barn behind the home of Cate and Patrick O’Leary.
- (Very near what is now that massive Burlington Northern/ Santa Fe railyard in the South Loop.)
- This was a (very) poor Irish immigrant family with five cows, a calf, and a horse… there was no love for the Irish in those days.
- The air was dry, a southwesterly wind was blowing, the fire quickly spread to all of the city, and within 3 days more than 17,500 buildings were burned to the ground.
- More than 100,000 people were left homeless, but the O’Leary calf survived.
- Chicago quickly rebuilt and just twenty-two years later hosted a gigantic World’s Fair, thumbing its nose at Paris and the rest of the world.
- Paris might have had the Eiffel Tower, but Chicago boasted the Ferris Wheel — and much more, including the modern-day skyscraper.
- Here’s the big question: If not for the fire, would Chicago have become a world class city?
- Give the first and last names of your eight (8) great-grandparents; go ahead.
- The United States Postal Service has announced it will be charging more and delivering less. (For real.)
- Learn from the younger generations: Mail is not mandatory.
- Thirty-seven percent (37%) of us have not written or mailed a personal post; i.e., U.S. Mail, in the last five years. (CBS News)
- “Our lives are limited, but hopefully the species is not.” (Doerr)
- As of two weeks ago I now have three doses of the Pfizer drug circulating continuously through each cell of my body.
- I’m safer to be around than if I were Jorge Bergoglio himself sitting by your side.
Misinformation Campaigns
- Is this a type of voyeurism?
- Misinformation on the Facebook platform received six times more interest and response than factual information throughout the 2020 quadrennial election cycle.
- A neighbor down the street keeps a large sign in his/her yard: “50,000 Deaths from COVID Vaccine”
- I’ve searched and searched the WWWs for this information and can’t find it, yet the sign is effective — and haunting — and has me and others chasing red herrings.
A Better Plan
- A generally accepted adage in the old days was, “If you don’t have a better plan, don’t complain or criticize.”
- The adage was probably meant to help sustain the status quo and to keep rabble rousers in their place, yet it might not have been all bad.
- What if, in order to complain or criticize, you had to put forth your BETTER plan?
- Great Britain did this recently when it decided to leave the European Union and go it alone… it had a BETTER plan.
- Now we’ll see how that works out.
- Did anyone tell King George III?
- Flexibility might be the #1 common denominator of all the buzz and vibe about change in the work place.
- The quality of bending easily without breaking, is what people are seeking.
- The willingness to change or compromise… the ability to be easily modified.
- Where will this #1 want/ need/ desire bring us — and what is the impact on productivity, if that is still important?
- What will be the cost if flexibility is not adequately addressed?
Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon
- A reader asked, “What happens if there is fog on the horizon?”
- Great question. I had to think for a bit.
- The metaphor of keeping your eyes on the horizon is such a good one — and a steadying/ calming one, but what IF there is fog, a dense fog?
- Here’s the answer: Keep your compass with you at all times — and use it, especially during times of dense fog when you can’t see the horizon.
- Properly used, your compass will not fail you.
- But you have to keep it on your person at all times.
- And, here are a few other thoughts — for my special reader, but also for EACH reader:
- LEARN as much as you can about the horizon during the good times so that during the foggy times you can still function;
- Take some DOWN TIME when the fog rolls in;
- REJOICE when the fog lifts, as it surely will — and you will see the horizon anew;
- Even the brutal and deadly London coal smog/ fog of 1952 only lasted five (5) days, though it seemed like an eternity.
- From our good friend, Will Rogers: “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it ’til it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”
- A novel set in Nigeria, stunning: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Soyinka, 2021)
