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