Craig's Corner

I fell in love with a house back in 2007. It had been on the market for five or more months. The price had been reduced a few times. It was the start of the Great Recession and nobody knew how bad it was going to get. The bank owned the house and had to approve the sales price. During the six months that we went back and forth with the bank trying to close the deal my love affair increased. I brought in contractors, had schematics drawn, estimates made, etc. In the end I gave up, fell in love with another property a few blocks away and closed in 21 days. It turned out beautifully as I rehabbed the house to my exact specifications and enjoyed the process and my time there. It wouldn’t have been so had I got what I originally was seeking. Many months after that the original property sold I was walking my dogs through the neighborhood and the winning owners were outside tidying up. I introduced myself and congratulated them on doing what I couldn’t – beating the bank.  The home...

I’m a planner. I like to know what’s going to happen. That makes me a good strategist. It also means that I’m not necessarily the most spontaneous person in the world. The trick, of course, is when life happens and things interrupt well laid plans – how nimble one is in adapting is critical. Like most of us I’m a work in progress as to being flexible. In some areas of my life as I age I am much more ‘go with the flow’ while other areas I seem to be getting less amenable. Politics requires a lot of pliability and if you’re planning a coup – you really do need to have your ducks in a row. On July 15 for several hours there was an attempt to take over Turkey’s government. According to the BBC : “It looks as if the coup attempt was staged mainly by the gendarmerie [national police] and air force personnel.” The rest of the military were not on board and ‘order’ was restored within a day. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fired tens of thousands of workers and thousands of milit...

I’m going gray. Technically my strawberry-blonde / red locks are transforming into white – but there’s still a good amount of each. The transformation has been happening for years. My Dad once told me that his hair turned to white in a matter of weeks so once I found that first strand some twenty years ago I’ve been looking at the rest of them for years wondering when the switch will occur. (Dad’s probably looking down with his crinkly eyes and wry smile, happy he got one over on me.) Every now and again I will catch myself in a reflection and marvel at the shift in proportions. There’s nothing to do about it and I have plenty else to worry and obsess about – but it’s one of those things that incrementally been happening and one day soon I’ll notice that one color will predominates any other. I think that’s a metaphor for race relations and violence in the U.S. right now. From our earliest days as America has been a mix of people. It started with Native Americans and European ...

I’ve spent most of the past two weeks at a convention/conference. It’s not dissimilar to any other one – there’s great opportunities to meet other people from around the country who work and have interests in the same field. There’s silly hats, branded clothing and the constant crush of people moving from one event to the next. For those of us who work in the field, it’s a wonderful opportunity to feel important, connected and aligned. In the weeks ahead the political world will hold their quadrennial conventions and we have let the parties take over the airways. Political conventions for the major parties are critical cogs in the wheel of democracy. Delegates make official the presumptive nominees as their candidates for President and Vice President. While technically true it’s the candidate themselves who choose their running mate and then present it to the delegation for approval. Party platforms are approved though it’s the policies of the nominees which govern what may or m...