test 3

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test 3

https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-131503461-1

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];

function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}

gtag(‘js’, new Date());

gtag(‘config’, ‘UA-131503461-1’);

test #2

https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-131503461-1

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag(‘js’, new Date());

gtag(‘config’, ‘UA-131503461-1’);

with anallytics code

Test #1

test 1

Is the Next Best Generation Saying Goodbye?

I had a getting-to-the-end-of-the-year tax planning phone meeting with my long time accountant the other day. Well, actually it wasn’t with my longtime accountant. The meeting was with a perfectly capable younger accountant to whom he has transferred the nuts and bolts of my financial life. It’s a phenomenon that I am experiencing more and more. It’s not about me; it’s about the aging of my generation.

The changes were presaged when my dentist merged his solo practice with a larger group a few years ago. My dentist was assuredly NOT of my generation. He has been taking whacks at my teeth since I was a pre-teen. He has always been good for a lament about the White Sox (except in glorious 2005) and one awful off-color joke. But Florida fairways have been calling to him with ever-growing frequency and it has become hard to schedule my 6-month visits with him. Through no active choice of my own, I have become a patient of the youngster in the practice, who will now be responsible for my continued ability to chomp on granny smith apples as my old fillings begin to crumble.

Next, my internist, another White Sox fan, announced his imminent retirement while spreading the word that his nephew would be joining his practice. The implications were clear. This time I took action, reasoning that as long as I was going to need a new internist, I might as well choose one closer to home and with more experience than a newbie (I know, I know, I was once a young physician too.) So I made the switch, even though in the interim Internist #1 has delayed his retirement. I’ve had some nice conversations with my new practitioner, though I have not yet broached whether she is a Sox or Cubs fan.

Oh, and Barb and I had a nice Greek dinner with our financial advisor the other evening. Let me clarify. It was with our financial advisor and his son. Yup, the transition there has begun there as well, as Advisor Père spends more time roasting in Arizona while Advisor Fils assumes the duties of safeguarding our future retirement. I hope the young whipper-snapper knows what the word means, and the fears that can accompany approaching it!

There have been a few exceptions to the hand-over pattern. When my corporate attorney passed away at a much-too-young age, his office mate declined to take over our file. But since my new corporate attorney is older than I am by a year or three, I expect I will be introduced to a young go-getter the next time I need a legal consultation. My hair-stylist still has three kids in grammar school. I suspect I will be her client as long as there are hairs on this head–at least another year or two. As for my tennis trainer, he will never retire; he’ll still be telling me to get my toss up higher when he is six feet lower.

As my contemporaries say sayonara, their gravity exerts its pull on me. We aren’t the “Greatest Generation,” but maybe we are the “Next Best Thing” and it will soon be time to relax.

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Ten Headlines You Never Will See-It’s No Joke

You won’t see these headlines in your morning news feed any time soon.

Archer Arrows Kill 10 in Crowded Club
Crazed Slingshotter Stones 15 on School Playground
Upset Jockey Whips Seven to Death in Paddock
Frenzied Fencer Fatally Fragments Five
Neo-Nazi Lumberjack Axes Four to Death at Rally
Slighted Sumo Wrestler Stomps Eight
Ancient Mace used in Mass Murder
Crowbar Criminal Kills Nine
Former Spy Wielding Poison Tipped Umbrella Kills 17 at Festival
Beleaguered Butler Bashes Seven at Gala Dinner

And one headline that never seems to go away

Mass Shooting in (fill in the blank). (Pick your number) Dead

Isn’t it time we do something about it?

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photo credit: wuestenigel <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/30478819@N08/43016009525″>Blacklist</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

The Election is Over. Now Thinking Outside the Box for Amazon HQ2

election-and-amazon-2 — Maps of congressional districts (left) and Amazon HQ2 choices (right.)

Amazon must be seeing blue.

One election is over. It’s the big one, with decisions on federal, state, and local elections. There will be a change in our next Congress with the Democrats winning the majority in the House of Representatives. But what I see when I look at an electoral map is lots of blue on the coasts, but a big red middle. Oh sure, there are some Democrats away from the Atlantic and the Pacific, but it is mostly in urban areas, our own metropolitan Chicago for example.

But one more election, or more properly, a selection, is coming. Amazon will soon choose HQ2, the second headquarters of one of the biggest success stories of the last 20 years. The pins in the green map above are areas that have met Amazon’s list of requirements, from available big buildings to abundant labor to transportation to quality of life. These are the 20 locations still in the running for the billion dollar Amazon lottery prize.

Put one map on top of the other and what do you see? With the exception of Toronto (and do we really think the headquarters will be in Canada?) all of Amazon’s choices are rolling in the blue. That’s where the facilities, labor, and culture that Amazon wants for its headquarters seem to be located.

But what if Amazon had taken a different approach? What if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had said “We want to be pioneers. We want to find a city, a region, a state that needs us more than we need them. We can bring jobs, help create infrastructure, attract top-notch engineers. We can provide a stronger tax base that will lead to better schools and improved healthcare. We might not have a symphony overnight, but we can learn of, and support, the local culture. We can be the new frontier.”

And what if Amazon were only the first? What if all those new unicorns looked beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street and brought their economic might to all areas of the country? They could stop making “liberal elite” dirty words to half the population.

Oh, I know it is a terrible short-term business proposition. Sthareholders would hate it. They would want to replace the Board of Directors, cast out the CEO. The Dow Jones would feel the ripple.

But wouldn’t it be nice if the world were a little more purple?

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Democrats Seek Hoaxer for Nation-Wide Opportunity

trump-and-blasey — President Trump calls Dr. Ford’s allegations a hoax.

It was all a Democrat inspired hoax! At least that is what President Trump now has to say about Christine Blasey Ford and her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.

Wondering how those sly Democrats (almost) pulled it off I decided to do some research. I hit paydirt when I found the following want ad in the July 10th edition of the Tribune, just a day after the Kavanaugh nomination. It was listed under the category of “Jobs No One Could be Paid Enough To Do.”

The want ad read:

Wanted: Middle-aged professional woman to play the role of “hoaxer” in the nationally televised production of Let’s Screw Brett Kavanaugh.

The successful candidate for this position must:

Have no history of political activity.
Have attended high school in 1982-1983 in the vicinity of Georgetown Preparatory School.
Have previously discussed with husband and therapist a fraudulent attempted sexual assault against her while a high school student.
Be willing to compose phony letters describing above and submitting them to her congressional representatives.
Have the ability to illegitimately pass a polygraph (lie detector) examination verifying the above.
Be willing to have her name released to the media.
Be willing to face death threats.
Be willing to relocate her home and go into hiding.
Be able to testify in a Senate hearing in a manner that the President of the United States might call “compelling” and “very credible.”

Salary negotiable.

Please apply to Democratic National Committee or The Deep State. You know where to find us!

Poor Dr. Ford. I’m sure it is one job application she wishes she had passed up.
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Kitchen Confidential. A Crunchy Confession

Have you ever really screwed something up? And then tried to hide it? Come on, I know you have. It’s human nature. But it is also human nature to feel the need for confession. If you can talk about it, it really couldn’t have been that bad. And so my friends, it is time for me to bare my soul. And I promise you, no guests were injured in the making of this recipe.

We love to entertain; we designed our home to have lots of spaces for guests to mingle, indoors and out. Barb loves experimenting with recipes, a twist here, a splash of something there. But there are some recipes that are sacrosanct, crowd favorites that are never to be tampered with. So if you have eaten at our house for a summertime barbecue, you have undoubtedly enjoyed Barb’s Japanese Crunchy Coleslaw. A sweet and tangy concoction made with shredded cabbage, smashed ramen noodles (smashing noodles is fun!) toasted almonds and sesame seeds, chopped green onions, and a secret Asian dressing, it has been a staple in Barb’s recipe file for decades.

At this point, let me explain my role when Barb is in full executive chef mode. My job is simple. Like any guy on the kitchen line, I do what the boss tells me to do. It can be chopping, sauteing, shlepping, or cleaning up. My goal is not to burn, drop, or spill things, and to keep the sink clear, washing pots, pans, mixing bowls and measuring spoons as needed.

Back to our cabbage story. It was an hour before a gathering at the house last year. I won’t say which one. The large white ceramic bowl that minutes before had been used to mix the crunchy slaw sat in the sink, its inside glistening with oil. I grabbed the sponge-on-a-stick, Dawn Liquid oozing out, and set to work cleaning the bowl. Suds were everywhere, my washing-up trademark. A spray rinse and then I hefted the bowl out of the sink and into the drying rack.

And then the kitchen horror hit me. The big white bowl hadn’t just been sitting in the sink awaiting a clean-up. It had been a dead weight over a colander filled with the fully prepared crunchy salad, the bowls mass being used to compress the mixture to eliminate excess dressing. And I had succeeded-succeeded in replacing the excess dressing with my sudsy water. Panic time!

What to do, and how to do it before Barb noticed! I rinsed and I rinsed and I rinsed. The blue Dawn color dissipated. I rinsed some more. I tasted, and the salad seemed to be ok. It had retained its vinegary tang without a soapy aftertaste. I put the white bowl back in place to once again compress out the excess liquid. And then Iheld my breath. When the Chef made her taste test a few minutes later, she licked her lips and moved to the next item. I finally exhaled. And our celebration that day went on just fine.

So to our past and future guests, rest assured, we serve the cleanest food on the planet. And to Barb, sorry ’bout that!

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photo credit: insatiablemunch <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/48041244@N05/11287202814″>IMG_0021</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Anti-American? Who Gets To Say?

nfl-flag-transparent — Do the NFL’s new rules tell us what an American is?

“The NFL is being anti-American.” That’s the email subject line on the David Leonhardt newsletter I received Thursday. David is a columnist for the New York Times and I subscribe to his daily newsletter, generally going along with his somewhat left-leaning views. And I concur with the premise of this one, too. He strongly disagrees with the new National Football League rule that penalizes and fines teams whose players decide to “take a knee” during the playing of the National Anthem. He feels the rules violate the player’s right of self-expression. I agree with him–it’s just that subject line (which he may not have written) that I have a hard time with. I immediately thought of an incident from about 10 years ago.

I was still a member of the Board of Education of Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, though no longer President. The Board, the District, and the School had all been running smoothly for many years, and the public comment portion of our meetings was typically short and non-controversial. We were able to spend our meeting time discussing educational issues and celebrating the successes of our students.

Until our agendas weren’t quite so smooth. A more conservative segment of the population became vocal, attending Board meetings and questioning the guiding philosophy and practices at the high school. Suddenly the biological sciences we had been instructing our students in became subject to dispute. Creationism started staring us in the face. And the patriotism of our Board members was also called into question. Were we failing in making America great?

The Board held firm on the most important issues, the curricular ones. But we did “cave” in one regard, one of the few times in my 16-year tenure in which I disagreed with a Board decision. We decided that all future Board meetings would begin with our facing the American flag, putting our hands on our hearts, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

I have no problem with the Pledge. I respect the American Flag and would never do anything to dishonor it. But I have an extreme distaste for being dictated to by a group of “patriots” as to what I have to do to display my own patriotism. I have always felt that being a law-abiding, voting citizen, who volunteered much of his time to serve his community, was proof enough of my love of country.

Not wanting to be disruptive, I didn’t take the “protest” approach. I stood at the beginning of each meeting and recited the Pledge with my colleagues. But I always felt like a phony. And each time, I knew I would never impose my idea of patriotism on anyone else.

So if some football players take a knee, that’s ok with me. And if the NFL wants to prohibit it, well, I think that is wrong. I just am careful as to who I call anti-American!
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