My wife Risa and I recently spent three weeks at my daughter Sarah’s home in Northern California, the privilege of the working-less class striving for family connection. My teenage granddaughters were there, and to my surprise, they too cared about connection with us, hopefully not just because they saw it as fleeting. A few days before we left, my oldest granddaughter, Eliana, and Sarah cornered me for a storytelling session in the kitchen that they recorded on an iPhone. They wanted to know about my parents and growing up on the south side of Chicago. I told them about friends…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I wish I had something original and brilliant to write in this blog, but I don’t, so I will throw out a few little ideas. Maybe they will add up to something of substance. Next week, the Iowa Caucuses will trigger the beginning of the 2024 election season. How dreadful that it appears that the two candidates that much of the country hopes will not become President are considered to be huge frontrunners. The election process is broken, yet we seem helpless to change it. My suggestion is that we have a third party called “The Neither Person Party.” If…
Last night, I watched the film, It’s a Wonderful Life, with my wife, Risa, and my daughter’s family in California. I wept profusely, as I always do watching my favorite movie, and my son-in-law, Scott, did too. My oldest granddaughter, Eliana, wanted to know why I was affected so emotionally. Through my drying tears, I told her how I connected with George Bailey, the main character, who is preparing to commit suicide at the end of the movie. The family business he had reluctantly taken over after his father had died suddenly was in crisis. The evil Mr. Potter was…
Is the traditional automatic screw machine business in a coma? It probably already is in its death throes, which does not mean Wickmans, Acmes, Davenports, and New Britains are no longer useful. Judging by the sales of Graff-Pinkert’s Wickman spare parts business in 2023, people are still running the machines quite hard. It is hardly a growth business, but it has worked into a useful segment of a viable job shop. Where do cam multi-spindles fit, and how do you overcome their numerous obstacles? The most significant impediment is the challenge to find multi-spindle operators and setup people in a…
As we head into the holiday season, there are few things that occupy our minds more than our families. This week, we are sharing a blog I wrote about Dave Dahl, creator of Dave’s Killer Bread. In 2019, Dave appeared on the “How I Built This” podcast, conducted by the finest interviewer I’ve heard, Guy Raz of NPR. Dahl slowly recounted his story of almost 40 years, much of it about misery, depression, and failure, culminating in enormous financial success and more disappointment. From a journalistic viewpoint the podcast was a masterpiece of storytelling – a slow, meticulous, layered presentation…
The images overwhelm my mind. I want to write about them, but the visions will keep me awake for years. You don’t need that either. The forensic experts who have been working for five weeks in South Israel still cannot Identify some of the incinerated bones of mothers and children burned and massacred on October 7. October 7 was Israel’s 9/11 but multiplied by 10. The murderers carried GoPro body cameras to take videos to laugh over at home in Gaza. The goal was not just to maim and kill the babies, it was to crush the spirit of the…
The Chicago Cubs “requested” their extremely well-liked manager, David Ross, to vacate his job on Monday. His boss, Jed Hoyer, flew to Ross’s home in Tallahassee, Florida, to give him the news in person. It was a shocking surprise to Cubs fans because Ross had another year to go on his contract, with an option year. By all accounts, he was well-liked by Cubs players and fans. He was chosen by General Manager, Jed Hoyer, four years ago, after being carried off the field by loving Cubs players when the team won the World Series in 2016. Ross retired and…
The leaders of the Big Three shrunk to midgets as they walked to the mound against the electrician from Kokomo, playing for the first time in the big leagues. The corporate players had $20 million dollar contracts. Shawn Fain from the UAW team was on a rookie deal after barely making the squad. How did Fain and the UAW sweep their World Series? First, he seemed to understand the game better than the well-paid veterans. He asked for much more than he expected to get, including a 4-day workweek and $40 an hour. He knew the weaknesses of the Big…
Last week, Lloyd Graff wrote a blog called “What Brings Me to Work,” which we think will speak to a lot of you out there, people who work in a family business, and people of retirement age who keep working—not because they have to, but because they get to. Maybe you’ve read the blog already, but even if you have, we think you will enjoy hearing it in podcast form, being read by the man who wrote it. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link, or: …
It is a day to talk about stupidity and how it usually catches up with you if you are in a big public position. First, it is the heads of Ivy League colleges who have in many cases allowed their schools to subvert what I consider to be the goal of colleges–liberal education, the right to doubt, ask questions, create new ideas. Sadly, particularly at our supposed elite schools, dissenting from the prevailing left-wing, fake liberal point of view is frowned upon and often receives ostracism and expulsion from the “club.” When I went to college it was a place…