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…
Author: Lloyd Graff
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…
I lean left politically and come from a family of Democrats, but most of my extended family are conservatives. I grew up with my father’s ultra-liberal ideals based on the most profound teachings of Jesus, and my grandmother’s traditional conservative values based on her moderate Lutheran church’s weekly preaching and her Norwegian family values. That upbringing helps me understand the American people’s visceral attraction to and repulsion by both candidates as I watch the political circus of 2016. My grandmother’s world is disappearing, and it saddens and scares her. At 19 she married my grandfather when he came of out…
I have been studying the process of buying and selling machining businesses for the past year. Companies have approached me to advise them on what to ask for their companies and others have called to find viable options to purchase. Our machinery business, Graff-Pinkert, has helped facilitate many transactions through the years and with baby boomers looking to cash out and other firms anxious to add sales and expertise, the demand for advice is growing briskly. In this article I’ll give you a taste of what I’ve gleaned. The market for small businesses, machining and otherwise, is extremely fragmented. Even…
At the beginning of September I spent some time traveling in Europe in search of lucrative machine tools, good salsa dancing and inspiration for an enlightening blog. These days the flavor of Europe has a bit of Middle Eastern spice thrown in, giving it a richer color and diverse tastes. The following account will give you a brief sample of the Middle Eastern spice that I encountered on my journey while in Denmark and Germany. I arrived in Copenhagen on a grey day. I caught a taxi at the airport with a grouchy driver from Macedonia. He told me he…