UPS, Amazon, and FedEx are all fully engaged in their annual employee purge. UPS says it is cutting 48,000 jobs in 2025–34,000 in management and 14,000 in operations. This might explain why Graff-Pinkert’s Wickman spare parts business was getting tariffed 200% on imports from England rather than the 10% rate we’re supposed to be getting. UPS doesn’t have the people to process the tariffs so they hit us first with 200% with a promise “one day” they will refund what we’re owed. Now we only use DHL for imports. One of the big reasons for UPS’s cuts is Amazon. They…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I am writing this blog longhand because words flow better for me straight from my brain to the paper. Very old school. Today I ordered three one-pound bags of dried Blenheim apricots (not the tasteless Turkish kind) from an orchard owner named Gilbert Gibson who owns Gibson Farms in Hollister, California. Blenheims are seldom grown anymore, but thrive in a small area around Hollister. For full flavor, the apricots are cut in half by hand and sun-dried until they reach peak sweetness. Not only does Gibson’s produce great apricots and walnuts, but they sell them themselves at the Palo Alto…
The price of gold topped $4,000 per ounce on Tuesday, October 7th, the second anniversary of the massacres by Hamas in Israel two years ago. A coincidence? You decide. My wife Risa and I know a local pawnbroker who deals in precious metals and jewelry. We asked him if he would take some of Risa’s inherited gold jewelry and turn it into tiny gold ingots that could easily be hidden. This may sound crazy to you, but not if you know Holocaust survivors or had family flee Russia and Poland during periods of pogroms (events like October 7th). We did…
Mr. Umpire, you will no longer be the Emperor of Home Plate in 2026. As the playoffs begin in the Major Leagues, I have been pondering how next year’s rule change, which gives teams two challenges on balls and strikes per game aided by 12 automated cameras, will affect the baseball that I love My daughter Sarah called from California to ask me about my feelings regarding the umpire’s hegemony over home plate being eroded. She’s a rabbi and is preparing her sermon for the Jewish High Holidays. She figured it had to have some connection in my creative cortex…
Rivian Corporation began as a scrappy startup in 2009. Volkswagen has spent decades failing to understand American car buyers. Now they’re betting $5.86 billion that Rocky Road and Licorice actually do mix. The electric vehicle maker, started as an enthusiast-run firm by an entrepreneur, R.J. Scaringe, with money from family and friends plus angel investors. This backing allowed him to pivot from small sports cars to adventure-oriented EVs. He attracted serious money in 2017–2018 including Sumitomo Corporation and a Saudi auto distributor. Then Amazon led a $700 million round of funding in 2020, with Rivian promising to produce 100,000 electric…
Labor Day 2025. A perfect day to float along with my thoughts on a gorgeous late summer beauty. The honeybees are at work amidst the blue sage in front of our house in a suburb of Chicago where we have lived for 47 years. Our son Ari and his son Judah have been staying with us this weekend. My wife Risa is baking brownies and they smell fabulous. She is explaining to Judah how she knows they are ready by sticking a toothpick in them. If she withdraws it and it has no residue from the brownies, they are ready.…
We all have unexpected moments which change our lives. They rarely happen while sitting at a computer. I was on vacation last week with children and grandchildren in South Haven, Michigan, and one of my granddaughters wanted to see the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus. She asked me to come along, not just to get insights into my Alma Mater, but also to see the place where my wife Risa and I met. We all went to the Michigan Union ballroom and were able to walk right into the giant room where the mixer was held on January 11th,…
Rich Hill was the starting pitcher for Kansas City Tuesday night, pitching against the Chicago Cubs, the team that drafted him out of the University of Michigan in 2002. His first Major League start was in 2005. This was the first game of his 21st season, with his 14th Major League team. When he went to the mound, I bet he had the nerves of a rookie. Hill is a serious guy. Baseball is his life, pitching is his passion. He had 11 starts for the Omaha Storm Chasers this season before joining the Royals, riding the bus like the…
Matt Boyd is a nice guy who pitches for the Chicago Cubs. At 34, after multiple arm surgeries, a baseball career that was almost over before it got started, he is near the top ten in the National League in strikeouts and just made the All Star Team for the first time. Before this season he signed a two-year free agent contract for $29 million — which looks like maybe the biggest bargain of the winter. He is 9-3 right now. *** Boyd was drafted by Toronto in 2013 after pitching at Oregon State. He had an 88 mile per…
Israel is my team. I follow it daily. I pray for it. My commitment is total—unfettered. I also consider myself a red-blooded American devoted to my country, where I was born. I can be both without hesitation. My love of Israel began as a child. My family was not particularly religious but clearly identified as Jewish. My parents did not know anybody that died in the German concentration camps, but I became almost obsessed with the Nazis’ evil in grade school. I was born in 1944, so they weren’t just a distant history book tale. The number 6,000,000 became an…