Fifteen years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a business conference in late March and ran into a used machinery dealer from Chicago named Earl Elman. Earl was a contemporary of my Dad. I knew his wife had a fatal illness, and he was a starched collar, grey suit kind of guy—not a gambler. “Hey, Earl, what are you doing out in Vegas?” I asked. “Lloyd, it’s March Madness. I come every year for the basketball games. I love it.” It struck me as so unlike what I thought Earl did when he was not brokering Bridgeports, but then…
Author: Lloyd Graff
My dad and I arrived in Nashville last Thursday afternoon to go to a conference put on by the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA). After checking in at our hotel I headed straight to Broadway to take in the main attraction of Nashville, the prolific Country music scene. I can’t say I’m a true country music fan, though I do love Johnny Cash, but I was in Nashville so I had to listen to some Country music. I find that even if I’m not an expert or big fan of something, be it jazz, bull riding, or sniper rifles (at…
Commitment to family is a bedrock value to my wife Risa and I. It comes before career, money, religion, friends, even the Cubs. It wasn’t something we preached about frequently to our children, but we built our lives together giving each other space while always staying in touch and caring about one another. We spent last week together, the 12 of us, in San Diego. We own several weeks at a timeshare resort, and we have been using it as a gathering spot for a dozen years. Trying to pull together the schedules of busy business people, clergy, software engineers,…
Are you getting better with age? The question came up for me watching Tom Brady’s virtuoso performance in the Super Bowl. He threw for over 460 yards and played a brilliant second half. I think about the issue quite a lot because I bet my livelihood on my judgement every week. If I’m slipping, will I know it before it’s too late to bail out or change course? If I go on a losing streak, does that mean I’m unlucky, or losing my mojo? My uncle Aaron Pinkert used to tell me often that the “dollar is round, sometimes it’s…
Chris Correa, an employee of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball team, hacked into the computer system of the Houston Astros. Over a period of two years he stole useful information about Houston’s trade talks, draft evaluations and analytical research. He was tried and sentenced to 46 months in prison. Yesterday, MLB fined the Cardinals $2 million, money which will go to the Astros organization, and it took away two of the team’s high draft picks in the upcoming amateur player draft. No other other people in the Cardinals’ organization were prosecuted for misconduct, but MLB commissioner Rob Manfred…
I had never been in a trailer park before, at least that I can remember, but I have watched episodes of Netflix’s Trailer Park Boys, as well as every single episode of Breaking Bad with Walter White in his 1986 Fleetwood Bounder encapsulated meth lab on wheels. So I readily agreed when my friend Jim asked me to photograph some of his Florida parks. I also accepted because I know that Jim is an enigma to the typically absent mobile home park owner who is driven purely by vast profits derived from curtailing expenditures on park necessities. He proudly takes extreme…
I’ve started this piece several times over the last two weeks, and each time I got deflected and went on to something else like eating, watching TV or reading email. I’ve been stuck as a writer because I was writing to fill space, not because I had anything to say. So today I sat down at the library and decided to be authentic. No politics, no sports, not much business. Just stop thinking so much, and let my unconscious write the blog. And I still feel stuck. What do you do when your mind keeps drifting, and you just want…
Last weekend I took a Uber downtown. After a few minutes of chit chat, my driver told me he was an immigrant from Syria who came to the U.S. five years ago. I asked him how he felt about our incoming President, expecting to get a strongly negative earful, but I was surprised by his response. First, he said he agreed with Donald Trump that our borders need to be more secure. As an immigrant who came to the United States through a legal process it makes sense that he would prefer that others do so as well. He said…
Maybe the pen is mightier than the sword, or so it seems in the worlds of crime and, lately, politics. What with the Russians hacking the election and Hillary’s emails, cyber security has been on the front page for months. The theft of millions of Yahoo! personal accounts and the shenanigans of banks everywhere make headlines, but countless less notorious larcenies take place every minute and have since the start of e-commerce. There is little law enforcement can do for the everyday case. Unlike an old-school armed robbery or breaking and entering where a gun or a crowbar is the…
This is my first Swarfblog of 2017 and it’s not about the Cubs. I am grateful to be able to continue writing it and grateful you are willing to devote your valuable time to reading it. I take neither for granted. Every day I wake up I feel I am a blessed survivor. When I write a piece worthy of putting my name on it (I do throw away a lot of crap I write), I feel a real sense of satisfaction. ****** I think 2017 has a chance to be the best year economically since the 2008 meltdown. Some…