Eat More Tofu

October 6, 2025

Good morning! Ladies and Gentlemen, each of us needs to immediately increase our consumption of tofu, miso, and soy sauce by at least tenfold. We owe it to each other, to our young republic, and to the farmers who produce the rest of our food. Suck it up! Here in Minnesota (U.S.A.) it’s a bit disconcerting to be flirting with 90-degree temperatures in October. It was a good week to have been long and strong on coffee, cows, and orange juice…… and short, but happily so if it signals cheaper dark chocolate on the flip side, on cocoa.

• Later today, just as the sun is setting, watch for October’s whole moon rising.
• I was wrong when I encouraged my children, especially the younger ones, to borrow big to go to college.
  • I should have been smarter; I wasn’t.
• Did you enjoy a few innings of baseball last week?
  • Interesting how this perennial pastime of spring and summer becomes relevant in autumn
  • We are rooting for the Blue Jays, the only international team.
  • Our garage has rarely been more organized or cleaner — zero thanks to me.
    • In one of the storage bins I just counted a dozen baseball gloves (mitts) and at least that many balls… (turn that into a story)
• Extremely unlikely, but something to think about:  What if they’re wrong about artificial intelligence?
  • What’s your plan if they’re wrong?
• Book:  Bound for Gold, Martin, 2018.
  • A spectacular, Michener-esque telling of the California Gold Rush.
  • One of you gave it to me, but I can’t recall who; nevertheless, thank you!
  • To whom do I owe a book return?
• The best from the most recent edition of The Smithsonian:  Behind the Scenes at Valley Forge
• “Hi, old man.”
  • I think it’s the first time I’ve been called that by anyone.
  • My sixth sense told me it wasn’t pejorative, just innocently descriptive and perhaps even a bit friendly.
  • I responded in the only way I knew how, “Hi, young girl.”
  • She was perched on something in her yard holding supervisory court over her younger siblings.
  • Less than a block away, it was the first time I had observed children in that particular yard.
  • I found the encounter oddly fascinating and have thought to tell you about it here.
• Would it interest you to know 80% of all books recently banned in the United States were in Texas, Tennessee (remember Scopes?), and Florida?
  • And, would it further interest you to know more than half of those books banned were written by Stephen King?  (Merritt, Etc., et al.)
    • Extra point:  When did Scopes happen?
• $6.7 trillion — that’s $6,700,000,000,000 using the old math.
  • Experts are predicting that’s the amount of capital needed by year # 2030 to keep pace with the demand for artificial intelligence.
  • Do we really want/ need this?  Or, is this now completely out of our control?
  • You can diagram the economic impact (remember last week’s truck?!):  builders, developers, design firms, construction companies, utilities, cooling manufacturers and installers…
  • … electricians, semiconductor firms, operators, architects, entrepreneurs… (Patel, Etc., et al.)
• With your permission — and patience — here is another snippet from the draft of my book, How Do You Know?
• BE READY:  “I will prepare and some day my chance will come.” (Abraham Lincoln)
  • In their 1982 book, In Search of Excellence, Peters and Waterman (credit McKinsey) concluded eight (8) different traits were consistently evident in all successful businesses.  The first of these characteristics was, “A bias for action – active decision making; i.e., getting on with it”   Further, they said, “…Quick decision making and problem solving tend to avoid bureaucratic control.”
  • Desire, no matter how fervent, is of little value if not partnered with an equal amount of action.  A vision without action is just a daydream.  Do something, try to get it directionally correct, but don’t just sit there waiting for things to happen.  Take action.
  • At the same time, you can’t be ready for action if you don’t know where you’re going.  As the old cliché goes, any path will get you there.  You must have some awareness of what you’re trying to achieve, experiences you want to have, and relationships you’re hoping to enjoy.
  • So, let’s assume you are a reasonably healthy and thoughtful person who is motivated to at least an average degree. Then, you will readily recognize opportunities likely to get you further down the path upon which you’ve chosen to travel.
  • This preparedness will present itself in different ways at different stages of life, sometimes quite clearly and formally, at other times less so.
  • Conversely, with a bit of reflection you will almost always recognize and reject a siren call that is directionally wrong.
  • Scouting was my ticket out of rural poverty.
  • I couldn’t have processed it quite so specifically when I was just eight-years-old, but I think at some level I knew.
  • My desire to belong to Scouting and to later become among its most-accomplished leaders started at a very young age when all I wanted to do was something other than the boring drudgery of farming.
  • I was never cut out for the discipline or the routine of farm work, though I do have mostly happy memories of a romanticized, idyllic, faux reality.
  • “Let me out, get me out, please don’t make me be a farmer, especially not a sharecropper.”
  • And so Scouting was my ticket.  I joined Cub Scouts at age eight, it met once a week right after school for a couple hours, which meant I needed a ride home.  When I got a bit older, I would sometimes walk or ride my bike the three miles back to the farm before dark and in time to still do chores.
  • I don’t understand to this day why my parents let me do this — join Scouting that is, because it was for the town kids and not for farmers.
    • (Continued next week, maybe…)