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An example of volunteerism

My daughter Amy has volunteered (actually pays to volunteer – thanks to all those who donated to cover her expenses) to serve on the Mercy Hospital Ship.  Until early June it is anchored off the coast of Benin Africa.  Amy is serving as a Nurse taking care of patients pre and post-operatively.  Patients get life-saving and life-altering surgeries, many for conditions that would be caught and fixed much earlier in more medically-advanced countries.

She got there in early January and returns to America in June.  Several of her friends encouraged her to blog about her experiences.  You can read her blog here:

http://aematheus.blogspot.co.uk/

 

American system precludes a Hilter-type leader

Saw a longer version of this in an email from my brother and on a Facebook post.  Shortened it here:

The idea of comparing an American president to Hitler is just as absurd …from any angle, in any context. The American system ITSELF pretty much prevents “Hitlers” from showing up. And America ITSELF is anathema to what Hitler was trying to create. An American ANYTHING or ANYONE is hard to fit into the Hitler model. It’s just not apples to apples.

There are some fundamental things to understand about Hitler:

1. He took over a small, failing state that didn’t have separated government functions, enumerated powers or checks and balances. It’s difficult for a guy like that to show up here, in this system.

2. His entire political career was violent from the beginning. There was always death in his wake. He didn’t just suddenly “turn” violent. It was a pattern …as it always is with sociopaths. This is THE most important thing to watch; the violence. I always keep an eye on who is rioting …breaking things …throwing rocks and bombs. It doesn’t make them Nazis. But it signals how far they’re willing to go.

3. He entered office with his own personal military construct (the SS) with allegiance to him ONLY. They would carry out things the regular military would never carry out: i.e. the murder of private citizens and political opponents. Nothing like that exists or COULD exist in America. We simply wouldn’t allow it.

4. He didn’t start out just killing Jews. He started out euthanizing people with special needs …for the betterment of the care-givers’ lives.

5. He disarmed the population, then nationalized healthcare and education. 

The list can go on and on. But the deal is this:

Hitler was a real life murdering sociopath. He wasn’t just a charismatic speaker who incrementally fell into bad behavior. He wasn’t just a racist corrupted by unfettered power. In other words, you or I probably couldn’t end up being Hitler. A garden variety KKK leader probably couldn’t end up being Hitler either …or a community organizer …or a New York real-estate tycoon. It’s not that easy or simple.

NONE of our American presidents have ever been Hitler. But the people of Germany certainly thought FDR was a murdering dictator when B-17s started dropping bombs on them. This is why you have to KNOW what you believe and why you believe it. Good guys and bad guys are often in the eyes of the beholder. And they often look similar in the fog of conflict. I would imagine Japanese Americans in internment camps wondered if their president was Hitler-like. Nope. Not a nice thing to do, but not close to Hitler.

Now, people are comparing Donald Trump to Hitler as some compared Obama or the Left to Hitler. I get that someone who is combative with the press and who wants to vet refugees and shut down open immigration fits the bill some are always looking for when it comes to finally getting their “Hitler” villain.

But if you study enough about it, you realize the guy vetting and banning refugees is probably not Hitler …the guy CREATING refugees probably is.  If we keep looking for Hitler in every United States president we disagree with, we’re not going to recognize the real one when he actually shows up …in a different country.

It’s Humor Time

Time for some funny things I’ve recently seen in the Dec/Jan Reader’s Digest:

Our new neighbors thought our Wi-Fi network name was our last name.  So when they gave us a Christmas card, they addressed it to “The Linksys Family”.

Contributed by Scarlett Buzek:
The line at our local post office was out the door and seeing that only one postal worker was on duty, the customers were getting testy.  To help hurry things along, a customer called out, “How can I help you go faster?”  The postal worker yelled back, “Go home!”

Contributed by Michael McRae:
Filling out a credit care application, my friend came up on this question: “What is your source of income?”  She wrote, “ATM”.

Contributed by Frank Petro-Roy:
From the start of our marriage, my wife and I had one rule: We would always respect hte other’s privacy in the bathroom.  And over the years, we honored that commitment.  That is, until recently. I was sitting on the toilet when my wife barged in, shouting, “Honey, close your eyes. I have to get a towel.”

Contributed by Jim Boehm:
While interviewing a candidate for a receptionist position, I asked one of my standard questions: “What do you see in yourself that you’d like to improve?”  Her response: “my breasts.”

Contributed by Michelle Choate:
Our new hire did not have a great start. On his very first day, he was two and a half hours late. Luckily for him, he called in to explain. “I know this sounds bad,” he began, “but I didn’t realize today was Monday.”

From resumania.com:
The skills section of your resume is where you can impress hiring managers with your qualifications. Or not, as these real examples show:
I offer mediocrity at its best.
I’m try-lingual.
Phone tap.
I’ve got a PhD in human feelings.
Grate communication skills.
Familiar with all faucets of accounting.
PlayStation 2.
Extensive background in public accounting. I can also stand on my head.
Ability to meet deadlines while maintaining composer.

Funny definitions:
Diplomacy: the art of letting someone else have your way.
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting

And on a serious note:

From Abigail Adams: To be good, and to do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.
(I hope we can forgive her statement from the late 1700’s and imply that she meant humankind and not just men.)

Scarlett Johansson Divorce

Saw the news headline that Scarlett Johnansson is getting divorced.  Hell, I didn’t even know she had gotten married.   And am embarrassed to say that then I read that she’d been married to Ryan Reynolds late last decade and I didn’t know that either!  How out of touch am I? Maybe I need to re-subscribe to People Magazine or occasionally buy an Enquirer at the grocery store.

FOCM Representatives in Miami at SCOPE

While I am not attending SCOPE for the first time in a couple years, FOCM representatives can always be found.

I received pics from a couple of FOCM members as seen in these two pictures.  Bryan Clayton, showing the FOCM card is with Temitope Keyes.  Brian Langin, who carries both the 1st and 2nd generation FOCM cards is with Nithiya Ananthakrishnan, Rob Nichols and my most favorite FOCM member, Deb Jendrasek.

Bryan Clayton and Temitope Keyes
Brian Langin, Nithiya Ananthakrishnan, Deb Jendrasek, Rob Nichols

Who do you enjoy working with

Jeff Weiner is CEO at LinkedIn and he recently posted about the people he most likes to work with.  His article got 20,000+ likes.  His Venn Diagram sums it up quite well.

 

People you enjoy working with

Weiner writes on the topic of how to have fun:

It then occurred to me that I’ve known a number of people who embodied the ability to dream big and get sh*t done, but who also proved very difficult to work with. Perhaps shielded by the immense value they brought to their respective organizations, they never cultivated the ability to manage compassionately, or even cared to. Rather, they did things their way and expected everyone around them to adapt accordingly. More often than not, that’s exactly what people did.

This is one of the most important things for me – working with people that know how to have fun.  I admit to having a sarcastic, smart-ass sense of humor or I notice things that are sound funny in the middle of a serious meeting.  I remember early in my career being in a meeting and hearing someone say something like that will be a new paradigm.  To which I replied, that’s worth 20 cents.  He said, what? I replied, “a pair of dimes is 20 cents”.  He laughed hard and then you could see the look come over his face, that he was thinking, hey wait we’re in a business meeting talking about serious stuff, i mean, i like laughing and all that but we need to act serious.

I think you can and should have both: be serious about the business problem or strategy you’re working on AND have fun.  It’s not like we’re doing brain surgery.

 

FOCM Card Ceremony

I do not know how or why I overlooked posting this.  I know I posted the pic or pics on Facebook of the beach scene.

So here it is: on a warm August day in sunny North Carolina, Stuart Munson received his FOCM card.  Stuart and I have known each other for close to 30 years.  We worked together in the late 80’s in RTP, NC and in the 90’s when he moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft we stayed in touch.  Through my business travels, we were able to meet up a few times in Seattle and now he’s back on the east coast about a 6 hour drive from here.

Swarming Stuart at the beach are Gayle Grandinetti, Sheryl Browne and Wendy Revenaugh.  I am pretty certain Stuart enjoyed the day at the beach.

Stuart surrounded
Stuart receives his card!

More Humor for Year End

A few more that I think you’ll enjoy:

I went to a Karaoke bar last night. At first I was afraid. Oh, I was petrified.

One Sunday morning, a preacher told his congregation, “everyone who wants to go to heaven, come down to the front!”. The whole church came forward except one man.  Tinking that maybe the man hadn’t heard him, the preacher repeated the invitation. Again, the man just sat there.  “Sir,” said the preacher, “don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?”  The man replied, “Oh, when I die! I thought you were getting a group ready to go right now.”

A little boy asks his dad, “where does poo come from?”  His father is taken aback by the question but decides to give his son the facts straight up. “Well son,” he says, “food passes down the esophagus by peristalsis. It enters the stomach, wehre digestive enzymes induce a probiotic reaction in the alimentary canal. This extracts the protein before waste product enters the colon. Water is absorbed, whereupon it enters the rectum finally to emerge as poo.” “Wow!,” says the boy, ” so where does Tigger come from?”

Origin of some of our Favorite Foods

I saw this in Reader’s Digest, written by Brandon Spektor, entitled “6 Foods you’d never guess were American”

Garlic Bread
Thought it was from Italy, it’s actually from Michigan:
one tale is that soldiers serving in Italy during World War II were spoiled on bruschetta. Savvy chefs met the returning troops’ demand by slathering toasted white bread with garlic and margarine. In 1970, Cole’s Breads planted a foodie flag in Mcihigan by selling the world’s first frozen garlic bread.

Fortune Cookie
Thought it was from China, it’s actually from California: 
Tweaking a Japanese recipe, Makoto Hagiwari claims his San Francisco teahouse invented the modern paper-stuffed fortune cookie in 1914; David Jung says it was his Los Angeles noodle shop in 1918.

Chimichanga
Thought it was from Mexico, it’s actually from Arizona: Several chefs claim teh chimi as theirs, including the founder of El Charro Cafe. In 1950, she fumbled a burrito into some frying oil, she says.  There were kids around, so she blurted out “chimichanga!” instead of the cuss word she wanted to use.  The name stuck.

German Chocolate Cake
Thought it was from Germany, it’s actually from Massachusetts: 
The man who invented the sweet, dark chocolate at the core of this cake wasn’t German bu this name was. Boston Baker Sam German created a new type of bakingchocolate for Baker Chocolate Company in 1852; 100 years later, a Dallas paper popularized the recipe for “German chocolate cake.”

English Muffin
Thought it was from England, it’s actually from New York:
 Samuel Bath Thomas called his creations “toaster crumpets” when he debuted them at his New York baker, which opened in 1880.  The term english muffins came later and you still see the name “Thomas” on english muffins in stores today.

Cuban Sandwich
Thought it was from Cuba, it’s actually from Florida:
 Tampa and Miami fight over where it was originated, but are in agreement that the sandwich was started as a cheap lunch offered to Cuban immigrants that were working in Florida’s cigar factories in the late 1800’s.