As we head into Thanksgiving, I am using the blog to express a few of the many many things and people I am thankful for today. I am thankful for breath. Every day I thank God for the ability to breathe deeply. As someone who spent 13 straight days on a ventilator in a hospital, I take note of my ability to breathe each day. A deep breath is also my way of taking pause amidst turmoil to get my bearings. It is a way to find some peace and prepare for sleep. ****** I am thankful for my family.…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The musings of a wandering used machinery dealer. Donald Trump, real estate mogul, is killing the housing market in his first week as president-elect. Mortgage rates have bounced up to over 4%. The refi market is nauseous and near vomiting. People are dithering whether to rush in now to buy, refi or wait for the unexpected knee jerk reaction to jerk back. Fortunately, November and December are not big home buying months, but if the Fed raises interest rates in December everybody will be paying more for money, including the car sellers and buyers. ****** Interest rates may be rising…
A person can be blessed with immense natural talents, but achieving greatness takes both stubbornness and faith. I just finished reading QB, the new biography of Steve Young, the Hall Of Fame quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Young’s story is inspirational because he had to struggle for so many years of his football career trapped as a backup quarterback while believing he had the talent to be a star if he could just get the opportunity to have the starting job. In his senior year of high school Steve Young had straight A’s, was…
I have been a baseball and political junkie for the last six months, reading all the statistics and scuttlebutt I could digest. I found a common thread between the two. All the stats and inside baseball were interesting and portrayed a fairly accurate picture about what was going on, but in baseball and politics there was another crucial ingredient that had to be assessed to really get what was happening. Who had the “energy,” the passion, the enduring enthusiasm? When I was watching all the “smart” people on TV and reading the erudite compilations of polling data as the election…
I received calls and emails all day congratulating me on the Cubs fantastic victory Wednesday in the World Series. Thanks, I did get the winning hit in the 10th inning, but really, I’m just one guy and it took a whole team to pull it off. Perhaps it isn’t so crazy to congratulate me for being a fan, an enthusiast, a progenitor of two generations of new fans, of adding to the monster TV ratings, of even buying an MLB labeled Maddon jersey, size 2XL. I should be congratulated for cheering for terrible players like Cuno Barragan who had a…
I am still woozy from the awesome Cubs victory in game five of the World Series. I watched the game on TV at home, but our whole family met at a pizza place about 15 minutes from Wrigley Field for a pre-game meal. Amazingly, my daughter Sarah, a rabbi in California, and her husband Scott got great seats, thanks to the generosity of one of her congregants, who had connections with Todd Rickets, an owner of the Cubs. Last Thursday, Sarah got an email from her wealthy congregant out of the blue, offering her two seats in Chicago for the…
My daughter Sarah’s goal for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year holiday, was to make her congregants think about how they want to live their lives this year. She asked a member of her congregation, Lisa Goldman, to speak. Lisa was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago. I found her talk extremely moving and asked her if I could pass it on to you. She has a blog that I highly recommend. lisa.ericgoldman.org -Lloyd Graff Rosh Hashanah Talk, Sept. 2016, By Lisa Goldman Hi, my name is Lisa Goldman. Some of you may have heard my story, but others of you have not.…
Today I am celebrating the 16th anniversary of Today’s Machining World. I have learned a lot about the writing business and myself by doing this thing that you are reading now. Please indulge me as I share my thoughts about it. I started the online prototype of TMW, then called Screw Machine World, in 1999 in full hubris, coming off the lush business years of the 1990s. I was full of confidence about the future and was sure that I could make the nascent Internet-only publication a success because of my creativity and brilliance. I hired a cocky young assistant…
A few months ago I was at the Bucktown Art Fair in Chicago where I met an artist/entrepreneur from Tennessee named Clay Bush. Bush uses old seat belts he scavenges from junkyards to make stylish bags, including laptop bags, backpacks, purses and bike messenger bags. He also uses seat belts to create wallets and upholstered furniture. He makes waterproof inserts for the bags out of used airbags, also from the junkyard, to hold cellphones and laptops. The buckles on the bags are the metal seatbelt buckles from GM and Ford cars from the ‘80s and ‘90s. He told me that…
My son Noah had been begging me to go to a Cubs game for several months. Sunday morning, the second day of the National League Championship Series between the Cubs and the Dodgers, he called me and put the hard sell on. I had no excuse to say no, except that it was so much easier and cheaper to watch the game on TV like I had done all season. I hedged and told him I would think about it and get back to him in a few minutes. For Noah, such decisions are pretty simple. If you want to…