My family celebrated Passover this past weekend. It is called the “Holiday of Questions” for many reasons, but especially to pull children into the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, hoping to reach the Promised Land despite all obstacles. My 6-year-old grandson is an inquisitive boy, and we enticed him to join the storytelling by promising him a prize for each good question he asked or answered. (He was the only youngster present). The questions quickly gravitated to the Israelites being slaves in Egypt. He wanted a smart 6-year-old’s definition of slavery and slave masters and why the slaves desperately…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I hate unions. I love Amazon. I’ve made a bundle on its stock. Their delivery service was a lifesaver during the COVID pandemic. Yet the story of Chris Smalls and the first union victory against Amazon Corporation at one warehouse, JFK 8 on Staten Island, excites me. It is a classic story of underdog triumphs against the Godzilla of American corporations. Amazon had two union elections last week, Birmingham, Alabama and Staten Island, New York. Amazon easily crushed the corporate union types who spent lots of money and brought in professional organizers from New York City to wage their battle…
Why did Vladimir Putin start this war to take Ukraine? I’ve heard and read a dozen theories about why he started this evil venture, which now appears to be both madness and failure. I think that a year ago or even a decade ago this invasion would not have seemed foolish to him because he was so blinded by what he saw as his destiny and his foes’ weakness. Putin grew up in the Cold War in the Soviet Union. His college was the KGB, which hated the West. He was stationed in East Germany when the Berlin Wall was…
One reason I continue to push the boulder uphill in a small business smack-dab in the middle of the industrial economy is that I get to hear the stories of so many people who have decided to start their own businesses in 2022. I cannot remember a time when I had the opportunity to connect with so many starter uppers. If you read or listen to the mainstream media you would probably miss the epidemic of startups in post-pandemic (we hope) America. I think the COVID-19 phenomena which exiled so many people to the solitude of their homes probably ignited…
I backed my 2016 Acura sedan out of the garage and headed toward Bergstein’s Deli to pick up the chicken matzo ball soup I had ordered a few minutes earlier on the phone. It is six minutes away. I order it a couple times a week. A teenager delivers it to my car five steps from the entrance. I always give the person who delivers it a couple dollars tip. I figure they are poorly paid and I want them to stick around because I value the good service. I got in the habit during the pandemic of picking up…
As Putin impersonates Hitler and attempts to steal a big piece of real estate with 44 million people, I’d like to discuss a few small pieces of the American real estate dream where ambitious folks are trying to build an investment safety net that will grow in value. In the last five years, accelerated by COVID-19, Americans moved away from staying in hotels. They are seen as sterile, institutional, unsafe, and boring. The remarkable entrepreneurs who run Airbnb and their competitor Vrbo picked up on this trend early and figured out how to capitalize on it. When some observers saw…
This is how I see the battle for Ukraine, from the comfort of rich, bumbling America. Vladimir Putin is Dictator of Russia, a miserable place to live. To Putin, the people of Russia are pathetic pawns in a narcissistic lust for power. The power game is his life and passion. He is a planner. Unlike American Presidents, he does not worry about elections or popularity. He sees their preoccupation with winning elections as weakness and silliness. He uses guile and corruption, backed by terror, to advance his almost maniacal lust for power and recognition on the world stage, using Russia…
Valentine’s Day is coming up this week. A Hallmark invention. But the idea of expressing your love or kindness or compassion to a person you care about is no joke. People have trouble communicating feelings. Not just people “on the spectrum,” but almost everybody on the planet has trouble connecting with people they care about. One problem is the language of connecting. The hug, the kiss, the handshake, even the wink or a laugh, often connect more naturally than words. A gift is one way to express feelings. Often it’s a clumsy way, but sometimes it strikes the right note.…
When my kids were young, I used to make up goofy bedtime stories. They were silly, with crazy characters. I called the main characters Ooga, Wooga, and Mooga. The kids laughed loudly and always begged for more. For my readers today, I have decided to tell you one of those stories. Long, long ago, about 1980, at a Paris coffee shop that stayed open until 3 a.m., Ooga, Wooga, and Mooga were sipping Turkish coffee and smoking cigarettes around midnight. Ooga said “I miss the good old days of Hitler, Stalin, and McCarthy in America.” “Yeah, those were the days.…
I like football, but I am not a football nut. I don’t even own a Walter Payton or Mike Ditka Jersey. But last Saturday and Sunday’s games were so riveting that I couldn’t move myself away from the TV, even for a stack of Oreos. And I love Oreos. Four straight playoff games were decided on the last play, and probably the eight best teams in the NFL played each other. Athletes gave every play everything they had. Great receivers used every trick they knew to get open, and the most amazing quarterbacks in the game threw the ball perfectly,…