Craig's Corner

New Year’s feels like the movie “Groundhog Day.” (Bill Murray’s character would wake up and have to relive the day over and over and over again.) New Year’s is much like that. We’ll all make the same resolutions – lose weight, better work-life balance, get out of debt, blah, blah, blah. The Gregorian calendar changeover from one year to the next has become the secular time to reflect on the year past and plan on the year to come. For Christians Advent is the start of the liturgical year. The Jewish tradition reflects from Rosh Hashanah through the High Holy Days culminating in the New Year at Yom Kippur, is the day of atonement. I’m a cradle-to- grave (eventually)Episcopalian and currently am active with an Anglo-Catholic parish that celebrates weekly with ancient liturgy in a welcoming inclusive environment. I particularly relish our major liturgical periods of Advent and Easter. I’ve always admired the Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur. I’m not much for fasting – a key component of Yo...

Picture it: the 1970’s. We lived in Connecticut. My parents had a Yankee Barn custom built and the living room had a soaring ceiling – easily more than 20’. To a small kid twenty feet was as high as the sky itself. Our tradition was piling into the Volvo and going off to a Christmas tree farm. The three kids would race around and my father would size up various options. We’d bring our own rusty saw and take turns cutting it down. We weren’t alone. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Americans buy 37.1 million real Christmas trees each year; 25 percent of them are from the nation's 5,000 choose-and-cut farms. This particular year Dad realized that it was very destructive to knock down a tree for a few weeks. It was getting expensive too. So why not spend a little more and get a living tree and use it year to year. Sure the first year it’d be a little smaller, but each year it’d grow bigger and bigger. Clearly going with a living tree was economically sound and it’...

We celebrate one fat man during these few December weeks each year. He’s big. He’s jolly. The commercialized St. Nick celebrates his girth and is rewarded globally with cookies and whole milk that help fuel his travels. Lucky for him he’s exempt from the encroaching limitations on our food intake. I’ve struggled with weight for as long as I can remember. There are nutritional, emotional, physiological and emotional issues wrapped up in the struggle. I’m not alone. Nearly 30% of Americans are obese and the trend is moving upward . There are many causes that the CDC identifies, but the bottom line is ultimately simple input/output. If more calories are input than output then the pounds come on. I’ve spent decades trying to disprove this theory. Maybe Santa will let me be the exception this year? The impact of obesity is tremendous on us individually and as a society. There are health issues that cost both in quality of life as well as economic matters that raise significant public poli...

I read Liz Smith regularly. That’s about as close to celebrating our gossip culture as I come. Liz is now recuperating from a fall but keeps her gossip coming as she enters her 88th year. If she ever ends her column I won't replace her with TMZ. I’m the exception as the majority of Americans enjoy a good bit of gossip based on the huge interest in celebrity lives and goings on. It’s largely harmless. Escapism is fine for subjects of entertainment, celebrity and fashion which are themselves less impactful than issues of war and economics. Gossip and rumor can be effectively used to grow specific types of businesses, especially clubs and restaurants that rely on the “hot” factor. Rumor and gossip can be very detrimental to the business world. There are competitive reasons and basic good management that dictates what information should be shared and what shouldn’t. I’m a great believer and practitioner of transparency where it’s appropriate. Insuring that employees know key pieces of...

Richard Dawson hosted the original “Family Feud” in the 1970’s where one family battled another. Each family had to guess the answers based on national surveys that were done on a range of subjects. There have been a myriad of variations on the show since, but it symbolizes for me the reliance that we have on getting people’s opinions. Today’s ubiquity of surveys and polls is thanks to the web’s technology that allows nearly any site to query the visitor on a range of subjects. Do you want it to snow today? What hair style should this person have? Do you want to ever pay a penny in taxes or would you prefer to just get a check for being you? In retail business, tracking what the consumer wants is a vital function of continuing operations. Stocking the shelves with products that people won’t buy is a sure fire way to destroying the business and guaranteeing unemployment. Politics has always been driven by what the people think. Every election is the ultimate poll result. Recent Presi...

' Tis that time of the year. Gratitude is unwrapped as the turkey is basted. I don’t mean to suggest that the expressions of appreciation are anything other than genuine – it’s just curious to me that it takes a National Holiday to remind us to be generous with our gratitude. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, though it is also celebrated in Canada, Netherlands, Grenada (in appreciation for the U.S. invasion of 1983) and Liberia. Each country has its own day, but the general originating premise (except Grenada) was the same: giving thanks for a bountiful harvest. The feast with the Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621 may not have been the first celebration, but is certainly the most famous . Today the tradition involves vast quantities of food and drink. Friends and family gather to share the experience, be with one another and connect. Football will be played nearly non-stop throughout the day from amateur to the NFL. The day after Thanksgiving has become the officia...

I want to be safe and secure. We all do. It’s one of the most fundamental characteristics that we share. When we travel we particularly want to protect ourselves. AAA  predicts that more than 42 million of us will travel 50 miles or more next week for the Thanksgiving holiday...close to 20% of all Americans. Nearly all will arrive and depart safely whether going to Grandmother’s house by air, rail or car. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has established new rules where air passengers will be randomly selected to undergo a full-body electronic scan that shows the screener a naked image to determine if the individual has any contraband or explosives on their body. Individuals who are uncomfortable with the scan can elect a full body search which now includes same-sex screeners exploring the genital area. Last week a passenger declined both, feeling that it was far too invasive and opted not to travel by plane at all. A TSA official threatened to fine and jail the pa...

Fall has arrived. In many parts of the country leaves have changed colors and there’s a briskness to the air. Most of us “gained” an hour through the now provincial notion of “saving” time. As nearly all of the farming done in modern society is automated and run by big agro-business, I’m not sure there’s much of a reason for futzing with the clocks. But then again I’m not in the oil business. With darkness descending earlier in the day, it’s a signal of a change in season especially when weather isn’t a traditional indicator of seasonal differences. Here in Los Angeles I call it the season of Santas. We get the Santa Ana’s in preparation for Santa Claus. For many weeks the stores have already had Christmas merchandise available for purchase. Candy canes are on end caps and decorations stand in contrast to the Halloween and Thanksgiving motif’s that are the bulk of store shelves. This season sales are expected to generate $447 billion . That’s a lot of money and for many retailers this...

I’ve had a great opportunity this week to catch up on some of my Kindle reading (aka book reading). In addition to pulp fiction, mystery and romance novels I have done some non-fiction reading. Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” provides an insider’s narrative on President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Tim Gunn’s “Gunn’s Golden Rules” is a breezy romp, has some gossip and Gunn’s opinions and recommendations on manners in 2010. As I mused on these very different titles, subjects and authors, I realized that they were more similar than different. Viewed through Woodward’s reporting – meticulously researched and impressively objective – the reader is introduced to Barack Obama, his process and how he works with the military. It’s a fascinating account that at its core is about how a novice civilian President must manage and ultimately direct a firmly established war machine that is accustomed to having its way. Over the course of his first 18 months in office there are repeated examples of the ...

It’s Halloween. Boo! I’m not a big fan. I used to be. I have a vivid memory of Mom making me a car outfit – a cardboard box attached to my shoulders by string. We colored the box, putting headlights on it and made a racing stripe. I loved cars and this was the be-all-and-end-all of costumes. It was totally fun, not to mention I loved the gargantuan amounts of sugar that my siblings and I would consume. I never liked the scary part of All Hallows Eve. I’ve never liked being scared. Maybe it was my older brother making me sit through Hithcock’s “The Birds” at like 4-years old...maybe I’m just sensitive! Today when I’m startled I will jump 3 feet in the air – likely the only time this white man jumps that high. I’m the exception. Scaring people is a huge business, though. The horror genre of media generates big money. The average person will spend $66 on Halloween this year – similar to 2008 – and total holiday spending will reach nearly $6 billion. Nearly on-par with that spending is...

A game I often play is the “what if” game. What if I had stayed in that job 20 years ago…how would my life be different today? What if I had gone up to that really sexy person and asked them out? What if I hadn’t gone up to that really sexy person and asked them out? Playing the game is rarely productive, occasionally instructive and allows me to look at decision making in a fresh light. Making decisions is something I love to do, something I thrive at and something I am usually very accomplished with. A typical business the day is filled with a constant opportunity to make decisions. It allows me to weigh the pros and cons of a particular situation, evaluate how the issue fits in with the strategic goal/mission of the organization and what its impact might likely be. I use as many concrete data points as I can, but, ultimately a decision is the ultimate form of what if. Having been largely successful my decisions generally pay off more than they don’t. I was faced this week with a d...