Craig's Corner

My niece recently had her theatrical debut in a children’s production of “Oz.” And everything that just crossed your mind about what that production would be is absolutely true. She was, of course, brilliant and perfect and I’m proud that she’s continuing the family tradition of experiencing and thriving in the arts. The community theatre production’s tone was set when minutes into the show Toto escaped from the basket on stage and bolted for the door through the audience. It happened a couple of times much to the merriment of the cast and the audience. One of the show’s signature songs “Ding-Dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch” reminded me of what’s happened in the Summer of 2016 at Fox News. Brian Seltzer of CNN reported : “Roger Ailes has resigned from Fox News amid sexual harassment allegations -- an ignoble end to his legendary, controversial twenty-year tenure running the country's dominant cable news channel.” He has now been replaced by a new management structur...

I’ve hired a lot of people in my career. I’ve made some whopper mistakes along the way. I’ve also given people the ability to grow and thrive in new situations. Accurately representing skills, experience and interests is really important when seeking new opportunities. It’s startling how lazy people are when seeking a new position. Whether it’s grammatical errors or addressing the cover note to the wrong company or citing a different position than was advertised – there’s a lot of room for improvement. Many of today’s applicants are not short of confidence, however. Resumes have become thesaurus-like with the wide range of kudos that people give themselves. The slapping of oneself on the back is very much in line with the Presidential election 2016. Donald J. Trump is the obvious example of hubris. Whether it’s congratulating himself on his ratings, his crowds, his triumphs or his plans – they are framed around his own exceptionalism. So much so that it’s easy to dismiss every...

Every month I balance my checkbook to the penny. It’s old-fashioned, but I do it. It stems from a job I had early in my career where I was responsible to reconcile hundreds of bank accounts –a full time job for this conglomerate. On one of the largest accounts – where there were thousands of transactions and some $10 million flowed through the account I got the difference down to $0.50. I was ready to “write off” the difference because it was so small. But my boss wouldn’t let me and I had to start the whole process over. My arguments that the company was spending more in my time to find that $0.50 fell on deaf ears. It had to balance to zero – and I understand why. Every account I’ve dealt with since has fallen into that same level of rigor. The Pentagon would never hire me. It was revealed that $6.5 TRILLION – with a T – has gone missing. The Pentagon has never balanced its books. I’ve written about this before. Apalling but #notnews. The new discovery is from the Department...

I’m a living time machine. We all are, actually. As the years go by our life experiences somehow move from “current events” to entire chapters in history books. I recently spent time catching up on some long overdue magazine reading. Yes, magazines. I still subscribe to a handful. It took a few hours to zip through some of the lifestyle rags. “The Week” is the news magazine that should be quick to get through as most of the articles are compilations of perspectives and reports from a variety of outlets. I find it a balanced way to capture the events of the week. I was behind so as I zipped through a few months’ worth I was reminded how much events of the past few months have changed what we collectively think. I skim read a lot of the political coverage because I already knew the result. The horse-race coverage matters much less when the match is over. Even in the calm pages of “The Week” the hyperbolic frenetic activity of the 2016 Presidential Race was captured and re...