I have been listening periodically to a brilliant book by Andrew Solomon entitled Far From the Tree. It is ridiculously long, 40 hours on audio, but every time I hear it I learn something. Solomon writes about the lives of people who are born “different” from their parents and most other people in the world. He sympathetically tells their stories and the stories of the people who are close to them. While telling a story of the family of a Down Syndrome child he reads this short essay written by Emily Perl Kingsly, the child’s mother. I found it very moving…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Hydromat has its Oktober Fest Open House in St. Louis coming up next week. The Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA) has its annual meeting this weekend in Hawaii. The Machinery Dealers National Association (MDNA) has their bi-annual Weekend With The Pros starting Friday. It’s time to get together and schmooze. These are extremely valuable get-togethers, especially in the time of Web ascendance which turns us all into iPad zombies. I do think the PMPA Hawaii con fab is too out of the way. Maybe they should do Winnipeg next year. The industrial auctioneers would love to do most of their sales online,…
I recently had the pleasure of taking a 10 hour international United flight. Why did I fly the notoriously “unfriendly skies” when historically I have always hated United? The airline’s seats have the worst leg room of them all, unless you pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of not developing blood clots. The food — I don’t want to look at it, smell it, and definitely not taste it. Worst of all, United flight attendants often seem to ooze negativity straight from their pores. Too often they transmit a grouchy vibe and simply look like they don’t won’t to…
Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of Volkswagon, is now unemployed because his company dealt improperly with the waste from 12 million diesel cars. Waste is a hot topic again. An XPRIZE of $20 million is now being offered as a challenge to make useful, economically viable products from the carbon dioxide waste, which pours out of coal and natural gas fired power plants all over the world. The unfortunate people who live in Singapore, Malaysia and Beijing are now walking around with masks. They deal everyday with the awful debilitating haze which blankets their air. In America we recycle our plastic…
The mess that Volkswagen now finds itself in will be a business case study that students at Harvard and Penn will have fun with for years. But for VW it is a problem that just keeps getting worse by the day. It has cost VW CEO Martin Winterkorn his job and will cost the company many, many billions of dollars. As a spectator who has never even considered owning a diesel automobile, I find it a fascinating case of over-reaching, because Winterkorn promised everybody he was going to run the biggest car company in the world and do it by…
It was the kind of PR blurb that arrives 40 times a day, making some inane announcement that everybody ignores. It came on Friday after 5pm, which is the time PR firms send stuff that they don’t really want you to read. That’s why I read it. It was a pretty juicy piece of news, if you could read between the lines. The DMG/Mori Seiki combo, which was announced in 2012 around IMTS, is making some major changes. Mark Mohr, the President of the combined American operation, is being sent to Davis, California, to run the DMG MORI USA manufacturing…
The National Football League is two weeks into its season and New England and Green Bay look very strong because they have great quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers. Who will win the Super Bowl? I have no idea, but the biggest winners may be the owners of the massive Fantasy Football sites that blanket ESPN and Fox with ads, FanDuel.com, and DraftKings.com. Those internet sites have taken in a ton of venture capital money and sold pieces to ESPN and Comcast to fund their enormous advertising campaigns. With approximately 35 million people playing and the sites taking a…
My wife, Risa, has been an educational therapist for four decades. She pushes her students to develop a positive mindset about their ability to learn. She helps them to develop persistence. She helps them find a sense of joy in learning. It is a really hard job. She does her work in an office in our home, working one on one with students, so I’ve had more than a peek at her work through the years. I’ve seen her agonize over kids who struggle with brains and bodies that do not want to allow them to conform with the rules…
Golf, race and prejudice have had a long tortured connection in Chicago. Now it looks like we will see a new chapter near my old home on the South side of Chicago. Golf course developers are eyeing the Chicago Park District’s 27 holes of pleasant, but pedestrian golf for a potential super course with Chicago lakefront views to accommodate a big time pro championship course. It could be a Pebble Beach of the Midwest. This is also the area where the Barack Obama Library may be built. It is a pebble’s throw from Michelle Obama’s home when she was growing…
In a deal that is supposed to close by the end of the third quarter, Watts Water Technologies is selling certain assets related to its brass fittings, brass & tubular and vinyl tubing product lines to Sioux Chief Mfg. Co. (“Sioux Chief”) of Kansas City, Missouri. The selling price approximates to $35.5 million. My understanding is that Tribal Manufacturing, of Marshall, Michigan, will get the keys to the Chesnee, South Carolina, brass turning plant of Watts Water Technologies. This is a big deal in the screw machine world because the South Carolina plant did most of the turned parts work…