Rubble in Gaza City, 7.26.2014

I met up with a Jewish acquaintance a few days ago. I asked him what was new, and he said his son was having an interview the next day to volunteer for the Israeli Army.

Why would an American kid who was not subject to the U.S. draft volunteer to fight? I can’t speak for him, but I think I understand the pull. I feel it myself, vicariously.

Israel has been attacked once again by a hailstorm of rockets and vicious killers infiltrating the country through underground tunnels. The Palestinian leadership in Gaza has had decades to make a logical settlement with Israel’s government, but continues to commit itself to Israel’s destruction and doom the Palestinians to misery and containment. I am not an ardent fan of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line stance, but there is a consensus in Israel for a two-state solution. Unfortunately, hard-line Palestinians have walked away from good deals that have been offered through the years.

Israel continues to get stronger both militarily and economically. The Palestinians are falling farther behind Israel and are even losing support in the wider Arab world. American leaders may not like the prickly Netanyahu, but both political parties find it useful to align with the American Jewish community that supports their campaigns generously.

I sympathize with the desperate folks in Gaza, who are victims of a cynical hateful leadership that has sacrificed its people to its ideology of Israel hatred.

I think the young guy who wants to join the fight thinks he can help end the endlessly painful struggle. It’s a romantic thought, though a dubious one.

I think the 2014 war will end soon. Perhaps it will buy 2 or 3 years of relative quiet in Israel. Maybe some peace will come from exhaustion and mourning. Maybe the Hamas leadership will flee in disgrace. I can hope.

I would hate to see this idealistic boy from Chicago caught up in a 2016 Gaza War. But I’m glad there are kids with the courage and idealism to put it all on the line for something they truly believe in – the one and only Jewish state.

Question: Can there ever be peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

IMTS is coming and neither Graff-Pinkert nor Today’s Machining World will have a booth — but we do at least have business cards!

Cards are a funny thing these days. It’s the 21st Century, and everyone has a Website, a Facebook, and smartphone that can store detailed information plus take photos and video. But still, if you’re in business anywhere in the world, you have to have a business card. Those little portable pieces of cardboard can be powerful. Pass out a lot of them, and maybe one will have a lasting impression that pays dividends.

Last fall, I was traveling around Germany looking for screw machines and Hydromats. Often on my business trips I resort to shots in the dark while I’m in between previously planned appointments. I call up companies from old lists of machine shops acquired by Graff-Pinkert over the years. I have a beautiful phone intro, “I’m in the area, so I was wondering if I could stop by your shop. Do you have any machines for sale or that you’re looking for?”

On a rainy day, sitting in my hotel room in Cologne Germany, I was able to get through to an owner. He then told me he had nothing for sale, so I shouldn’t come, but he recommended that I try a colleague with a shop in the mountains, about two hours away. I called the shop up and made it through to the owner, and indeed they had a very expensive vertical Hydromat for sale and said they would be happy to have me. So I drove out to the boonies on the west side of Germany — it seems like most shops in Germany are in remote places — and when the owner met me at the door he handed me a boring black and white business card in pristine condition. I couldn’t believe it when the card read “Rex Magagnotti,” my fellow salesman at Graff-Pinkert. Apparently Rex had trekked up to the same shop 16 years ago, probably just like me, on a whim, looking for treasure.

There is something about a business card that has the power to make a lasting impression. Sure it likely will get tossed or bunched in a rubber band with 100 others, but it has a presence, it’s tangible, you can carry it in your wallet, keep it on your desk, or write on the back of it. If the receiver cares about what’s on it, it might just survive. Paper is a waste of natural resources and a cumbersome thing to organize. However paper can last for centuries. The Vatican library has books that have lasted 2000 years. Computer bytes disintegrate in 5 to 10 years, meaning the data has to be constantly backed up.

Another business trip also gave me a respect for business cards. When I went to Japan to do a story for Today’s Machining World, I was instructed that if a Japanese person presents you with a business card, you must read it thoughtfully for at least 30 seconds and then carefully store it in a holder, rather than shoving it in your pocket. The card is regarded as a symbol of a company, deserving respect.

My friend Rich Kaplan, a professor of creativity who used to contribute to Today’s Machining World, told me that a good business card should have a utilitarian purpose, in addition to just being a promotional tool. For example, he suggested putting a ruler on the back of a business card, or perhaps a table of feeds and speeds. Put something on the card so it can be constantly used for practical purposes and stay in the hand of a customer as much as possible. Our Graff-Pinkert business cards were designed with a matte finish and a lot of blank space on the back, so people can easily write notes on them. When I’m at IMTS this year, I will try to remember to only write on the back of our own cards and not on the back of one from a Japanese company.

Question: What should Barak Obama’s business card have on it?

The American Girl Doll, Ivy, that Lloyd’s granddaughter Eliana received for her birthday (left)

My oldest granddaughter Eliana celebrated her 9th birthday Monday, and her grandmothers splurged on an American Girl doll for her present. She and her sisters love these dolls and they have a small family of them accumulated from several birthdays.

I am fascinated by the success of the doll company, started by Pleasant Rowland in 1986 on a shoestring, an idea and a bit of a lie. She sold her company, called Pleasant Company, to Mattel (owner of Barbie™) in 1998 for $700 million cash.

I have enormous respect for Rowland as a marketer. She built a brand based on history, wholesomeness, and quality that has endured and grown hugely under Mattel’s management. But she fudged the story about the genesis of the doll in her early catalogues. In Rowland’s story of the American Girl Doll, she writes that “deep in the basement of a small museum lies a tattered, water-stained doll trunk. Open the dusty lid and the long-ago childhood of some lucky girl comes instantly to life. Tucked gently inside a beautiful porcelain doll – dearly loved and much played with. I discovered this trunk by chance more than a year after I had begun working on the American Girl Collection. It served as a powerful reminder of why I had begun the collection, and what I hoped it would accomplish.”

However, the story written around this doll and its image is false. The doll was purchased for Sybil Hanks (born 1908) by her parents and named Nancy Hanks. She was kept in pristine condition and never played with before being donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1966 along with Hanks’ entire collection. When Rowland put the doll in the catalogue, it was placed by a water stained trunk to convey a “well-played with” image.

Rowland’s story stretched the truth a little, but don’t we all in business and in life? Haven’t we all said “you look mahvelous!” to a friend who needed a boost, even if they looked pallid and frazzled.

When is stretching the truth a “lie” and when is it just smart marketing or saying the right thing at that moment?

I listened to a fascinating TED talk recently on this subject by Dan Ariely, the brilliant social scientist and commentator. His topic was ‘“cheating” and “stealing” not just lying.’ His point is that we tolerate and even accept a lie if it is perceived not to hurt other people and is believed to be a “small one.” Telling a friend that they “look mahvelous” is probably not going to offend anybody but the most sensitive sourpuss.

But how about Patience Rowland’s little lie to the parents of 8-year-old girls? Did she violate the sense of honesty and purity she meant to convey in her doll creations by dramatizing a fiction to the parents and grandparents who were shelling out a paycheck for dolls and doll clothes dedicated to a purified image of wholesomeness?

I am in the “who cares?” category. We love our stories and myths. They bring meaning and depth to our humdrum lives. My beloved granddaughter Eliana cherishes her dolls and their families. She gobbles up the books about the imagined stories of her doll figures and embellishes her dolls with her own version of their biographies.

The purists who begrudge Patience Rowland her fortune because she saw gold in a romanticized doll story and executed her vision to perfection miss the point. Myths, even made of little lies, are the stuff of life. My Dad and I used to joke around that all our dirty oily screw machines were used by “a little old lady on Sunday.” If we ever found a pristine National Acme that had been sitting in government storage for 25 years, we would call it a “little old lady machine” and laugh.

Stretching the truth. Indulging a little lie. It’s business.

And “you look mahvelous” too!

Question: Is lying a sin?

As an owner of two small businesses, which are doing pretty well these days, I am in the throes of a daily decision making quandary. Do I hire more people, rent more people, or just watch which way the wind is blowing? This is a very real problem for me and I sweat it almost every week.

The unemployment/employment numbers display the split personality of the current American economy starkly. The Unemployment Rate and number of Unemployed Persons have decreased significantly over the last year. However, in June, the average workweek for all employees on private non-farm payrolls was only 34.5 hours for the fourth straight month. (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm)

The Graff-Pinkert & Co. used machinery business is busy. Our machine cleaning and repainting area has been understaffed for years. This year we finally decided to do something about it by hiring a second shift. Rex Magagnotti, who watches over the plant, in addition to his major role in buying and selling machinery for the company, has been urging me too attend to our log jam of dirty machines for a long time. I hesitated spending the money, largely because of all of the add-on costs of full-time employees, particularly expensive health insurance. The compromise was to hire part-time people, summer people, and rented employees from temp agencies. This way I can get my elbow grease and cleaned machines without a sense of deep commitment to the folks we hire.

Like many small business owners, I am deeply invested in my employees.

Many have worked for the company for more than 20 years. They are members of the “Graff-Pinkert family.”

This was not the approach I took when I hired a new electrician and office manager last year. They were clearly full-timers, and I was all in with them. But for a second shift, I just wanted hardworking summer folks or people who knew they were temporary, and expendable. It’s the new American workforce, less than 30 hours a week, rental people from temp agencies like Manpower or contract workers.

I have learned that some workers also play the game very skillfully, maneuvering their hours so they can draw unemployment pay for many months after their mediocre short-term work ends. I find this annoying, but if somebody is going to spend their creative talent on gaming the system, so be it. I have better things to do than worry about their petty shrewdness. They will never end up with good long-term jobs.

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is certainly one reason part-time employment is soaring and full-time jobs are scarce. As a hirer, I am always struggling with the calculation of whether a person is worthy of full-time employment and the huge premium I pay for such services. It is very difficult for a potential low skill hire to make a convincing case that they are worthy of the full timer premium.

The issue of the day is the push to almost double the minimum wage to $15 per hour. It is the rebound reaction to the dearth of high paying full-time jobs. If the inflated minimum wage becomes local or national law, the sure result will be shorter hours, fewer jobs, and high real unemployment. It will mean young workers will not get the vital experience they need to become productive, high-paying earners.

I sympathize with poorly paid part-time workers. Their plight stinks. I look at Graff-Pinkert’s best employees who learned skills on the job and prospered over the years. Today they would have a harder time getting in the door and proving their worth.

There is still plenty of opportunity for bright, ambitious, hard-working people – even those without a lot of book learning. But unless they have connections or good luck, the economy and the politicians are inadvertently pushing them into 29-hour jobs or difficult to stitch together freelancing gigs.

It’s tough out there, but I have to watch my bottom line. I will be rationing my full-time jobs and looking for talent for the short term.

Question: Is $15.00 per hour the right minimum wage?

See the video below

A few weeks ago, I published a blog about my video series on YouTube. It is a documentary of my Greyhound Bus trip from Chicago to San Francisco when I was 19, called Where Are You Going?

The series centers around the colorful passengers who included a chef from a nudist spa, a 36-year-old bi-sexual grandfather, a man who had just gotten out of jail, and a guy who lives on a ranch in seclusion, house sitting for free.

I also filmed my dad driving me to the bus station, imparting some last minute wisdom. One of the things he told me has stayed in my mind over the years. We discussed the concept of “being in the right place, at the right time.” I told him that I hoped the coming bus ride was going to change my life. He responded by saying that if a person is in the right state of mind, he can find meaning and importance in all kinds of places, perhaps anywhere. Therefore, being in the “right place” is mostly caused by the person, rather than mere chance or luck. The idea has proved true for me throughout my life, including during the experience of the bus ride, as I had hoped. People on the bus told me stories that I could never have made up, their views opened my mind, and they gave me an opportunity to create a unique work of art.

In the short video included in this blog, my diverse fellow passengers illuminate my dad’s belief that a person’s frame of mind affects what happens in one’s life. A person’s ability to see special things when they come along is essential for finding happiness and success.  Please have a watch. It’s my favorite video of the series.

Question: What is the best trip you ever took?

All hail soccer, the great American sport, as we cheer and lament the U.S. futbol team that competed valiantly in the World Cup in Brazil. After the tournament, many of our best players will return to their respective European pro teams, and we will once again become indifferent to the boring “minor” league soccer (MLS) played in our country.

The MLS has been piddling along now for 18 years, following other incarnations of the world’s favorite sport in the U.S. Now it is reformulating itself once again, with some of the richest guys in the world buying into what they see as a virgin market opportunity–a chance to appeal to the millions of middle class kids running all over the “pitch,” only to ignore the game once they reach their twenties.

Can it play in Paducah? Will Americans ever buy into professional football (soccer) like they do in England, Argentina and Mexico?

I think it really is possible. Some people theorize that the utter ineptitude of the MLS folk to generate an audience is really a brilliant conspiracy by several NFL team owners to sabotage the league and safeguard the value of their National Football League properties. It may sound a bit far-fetched to bamboozle soccer as a defensive move, but the explosive growth in the value of an NFL franchise over the last 18 years coinciding with the boring product of the MLS makes the theory at least worthy of mention.

It is possible that with American kids’ participation in American football and baseball both on the wane, those super wealthy people pushing the rebranding of soccer here are finally going to strike a chord with the American public. American football is struggling with litigation and the devouring of its best players by injury. I think the game has peaked both in participation and popularity. Baseball is importing much of its talent from the Caribbean and Asia. This is also not a recipe for long term American fan support.

The National Hockey League, a truly international league, has found new life spurred by suburban hockey rinks and HDTV that finally makes the game television worthy. The NBA is also an example of a successful world league with its Champion San Antonio Spurs. The polyglot group of guys from Argentina to Mars is an archetype for world peace. But basketball still has its heart in the city playgrounds and backyard backboards throughout America.

Sports do go up and down in popularity. Could anybody have predicted the popularity of Mixed Martial Arts 10 years ago?

In my opinion, it is too early to say whether football (soccer) can actually take off as a spectator sport here. But I do think that this time around, some serious foreign money is really going to try to change our taste. If Americans can learn to love sushi and make the avocado the equivalent of the apple in today’s kitchen, we can adopt the world’s favorite sport.

The National Football League should be worried.

Question 1: Is the NFL too brutal?

Question 2: Is soccer boring?