I recently received a note from a friend telling me that Notre Dame had just terminated its intramural tackle football league. It was the last college in the country to have one. He had fond memories of putting on hand-me-down uniforms of famous varsity players. It was a way the kids in the halls bonded and developed a commitment to the university. To me, one of the saddest things about modern day life for the young and old, particularly men, is the lack of friendships. As a kid, I played baseball in the park across the street and in Little…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Please excuse the error in the email blast. If you meant to go to the newest podcast, please click on this link. The question seems as obvious as the sun in the sky. Our company can make more money if we can find skilled workers to run our machines. Where are they? What if that is the wrong question? What if there were a dozen questions and the simple, straightforward one was leading you into a brick wall? What if a better question was how much will it cost…
Are we more connected today or more distant? A few days ago, I received an email from a business relationship I had not heard from in a decade. He wanted to connect with me on LinkedIn. I do have a LinkedIn account, but I have no connections because I lost my password and lacked the motivation to invent a new one. Every week, I get several emails saying somebody I never heard of wants to tie up with me on LinkedIn. I ignore them all. I don’t feel like I have the time for it. But this email intrigued me…
Memorial Day 2023. Families gathered for barbecues. I was in California to watch my three granddaughters take the leads in a musical play about the making of the original Peter Pan in London, a story about a young boy who could fly. On the short drive to the improvised theater’s location, we passed a sign for the large Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto. My mind immediately focused on my high school classmate, Glenn, who I used to shoot hoops with. He had been just a little older than my oldest granddaughter when his life ended over the skies of Laos,…
About 30 years ago, my wife, Risa, was on the commuter train headed downtown for an appointment with her gynecologist. Suddenly the conductor was scurrying into the car. He shouted, “Anybody know CPR? A baby isn’t breathing.” Risa was trained in CPR and loves babies. She jumped to her feet and followed him to the screaming mother, who happened to be African American. Everyone else sat still as statues. The baby was covered in blood. She weighed 5 lb and was three weeks old. A young guy was holding her in one hand and doing chest compressions with two fingers.…
Picture this situation. $1.3 billion in clean, desirable, unused inventory sitting in your warehouses. Your predecessor recently got fired for bad business judgment after several successful years. Your brand is in the sewer and still sinking. There are plenty of buyers who would love the inventory because they could almost instantly sell it for a big profit, but if you sell it to them you might have a dozen lawsuits and get the ax too. The inventory we are discussing is Adidas’s leftover Kanye West brand Yeezy shoes. Tomorrow at Adidas’s annual stockholder meeting in Germany, one of the company’s…
I followed a Tesla Model S driving home last night. Attractive blue sedan, even in the Chicago gloom. I have not personally seen any other makes of electric vehicles other than a rivian pickup, which looked like it had never been driven on the streets of Chi-town. I know Ford has sold some Mustangs, and GM sold some Bolts, which they discontinued. I see no electric BMWs or Mercedes or Audis or Chinese built electric varieties in my town. Tesla owns the American market for electrics, but their behavior says they are running scared. Two price cuts in the last…
I commemorated the 26th anniversary of my dad’s death this past weekend. I lit the traditional Yahrzeit candle, which lasts 24 hours, and said the ancient prayer in Hebrew called the Kaddish. This time it was particularly significant because it also meant that I had lived longer than him. I know that such footnotes of survival are stupid in the rational world in which I walk on the treadmill, trade machine tools, and write weekly blogs. Yet it looms large to me. Oddly enough, I also had my semi-annual appointment with my cardiologist yesterday, who listened to my heart, and…
I am haunted on this day. I could not focus on work, health, family, even baseball. My blueberries I ate for breakfast even evoked thoughts of blue forearm tattoos with numbers. The light blue sweatpants I wore for a workout on my treadmill brought up visions of blue striped prisoner’s pajamas. Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, have sleeted into my memory. I’ve spent hours watching and listening to trailers of Holocaust films today. *** It’s odd. My parents never discussed the Holocaust with me. It was not a school topic. I was naive, and I didn’t read…
It’s April. Holy Cow! Call me a silly romantic, but I love this month. Spring. Birds are chirping. Magnolias are blooming, even in Chicago. It’s a joyful cacophony. And there is SPORTS. It is the one great thing on TV if cooking and home improvement bore you. First, there was the NCAA Basketball tournament. My favorites were knocked out early. Florida Atlantic from Boca Raton in the Final Four? Are you crazy? Last second shots. Unknown players and coaches. I loved it. Now the NBA playoffs start. After a thousand games, we get to watch the best players in the…