Category Archive

Dear Reader,

If you live in Illinois I strongly suggest you stop what you’re doing right now and write Governor Quinn. I got this disturbing email from Amazon today:

Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington DC in 1963. 1700 pristine words transformed history – and 2 generations later America got its first black president.

If you get 10 minutes on the evening news or a front page story on the Huffington Post; if you wire up some ingenious viral campaign on Twitter or Facebook, that’s fabulous.

But one week later you might just as well have written “I love Suzy” in the sand and watched ocean waves erase it from memory. You’re dismayed at how perishable any form of publicity is.

But just yesterday…

Do you hire talent or hire yourself out to others?

A lot of folks are cynical about new years resolutions, but you should set them. Zero goals = zero personal accountability. Nobody ever drifts into a major accomplishment.

Long-time Renaissance Club member Tom Meloche mentioned this to me the other day. He’s absolutely spot-on. The Big Bad World Out There has a big giant buggy whip and it’s driving people into doing something for themselves.

Do you remember a time when a concept known as ‘job security’ actually existed? I’m not sure anyone even uses that term anymore.

Then there’s the reality that the vast majority of politicians seem to believe the public is a horde of mindless cattle whose only function is to be…

My friend and neighbor Joy Sherfey has a close relative, Lisa Fox, who’s been to surgery for the second time for a brain tumor. Lisa is a 39 year old mother of young children, and this has not been a fun time for anybody at the Fox household. She is weak, she’s on chemotherapy, and her memory, speech and motor skills have all been seriously affected by the surgery. She brings a spoon or fork to her mouth with considerable difficulty.

Most people collapse into a holiday-induced stupor the week of Thanksgiving and don’t emerge from it until mid-January.

Then, at roughly the time they’ve given up on most of their new years resolutions, they snap out of their hypnotic state and return to business as usual. Another day, another fifty cents.

But not everybody.

While the rest of the world lapses into merriment and shots of Bailey’s Irish Cream, True Gladiators strategize and execute, and fill in missing blanks in their knowledge.

I am inviting you to do this.