May 2008: Food Shortage?

Shortly after sending out my March e-letter on the Recession, I was driving home listening to All Things Considered, the National Public Radio Evening News. There was a story on the price of rice. It seems that two years ago rice was selling for $250 a ton. In 2007, the price had risen to $350 a ton. Today the price is $850 a ton. I was shocked. I also knew I would be writing about this topic in May. I am a bit amazed to be writing on such a similar topic a short two months after writing about the recession in my March letter. It is something, however, that I do worry about.

A short internet foray led to the following facts on the price of rice. US long grain rice has doubled to $800 per ton since last year. A year ago, Indian basmati rice was selling for $850 a ton and has risen 182% to $2,400 in April. Thai jasmine rice was $559 last year. The price for this rice increased to $1,125 per ton. The increase has been dramatic this year. In January, the price for basmati and jasmine rice respectively were $625 and $1,300 per ton.

This kind of steep increase in price has forced and is partially fueled by rice producing countries hording their production. Certainly, it forces the price of rice up for the more affluent parts of the population. We complain but in the end we pay. The news may force us to horde rice as well. Costco and Sam’s Club and other stores have limited the purchase of rice to one 25 lb bag per person. This, of course, caused a run on rice. Some of the outlets of these chains can barely keep rice in stock.

The problem is in the poorer countries, the countries that need and rely on the import of this staple grain the most. Their supplies have been severely curtailed to the point of causing riots. In early April, there were reports of riots and unrest in Haiti, Egypt, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Bolivia, and Uzbekistan. These are countries were the average person spends 50-60% of their income on food and where the price increase of rice alone can erode the countries’ GDP by one percentage point.

Some of the articles I read even talk about prices increasing another 40% this year. Whether that happens or not, one thing is very clear. The poorest people of the world are feeling this problem in their wallets and, of much greater concern, going hungry.
Is this an aberration? Is it just a matter of price-supply equilibrium being reset? Or is it something more? Is this the first sign that the population has finally grown to the point where we have outstripped the resources of the planet and hence our ability to feed and sustain ourselves?

As I try to make sense of this, there are two schools of thought that seem to cover the basic analyses and arguments:

1. Free Market Economy School
2. Limits to Growth School

Free Market Economy School: This school believes that markets and free market economies are efficient and will, over time, correct themselves. The forces of supply and demand will reach equilibrium in terms of pricing and consumption. Furthermore, as business and science march forward with more and more innovation, people will be offered more and more the products and services that will make their lives better.

There is thought in this school that we are in the midst of a “commodity bubble.” This is a condition where speculation and futures trading runs up the costs of commodities such as oil, grains, and metals. To some it resembles the technology (dot com) stock market bubble of the late nineties. The bubble will eventually burst, not without pain to some, and prices will correct themselves. George Soros is definitely in this school of thought though he believes that the bubble is still growing.

We may well be in a commodity bubble. But, it cannot be likened to the dot.com bubble. The dot.com companies and their stock were entities created for the most part from our imaginations. They were not a finite natural resource like oil. There was not a physical production limit like there are for agriculture and food processing. I am not sure if there were one thousand dot.com companies or one hundred thousand. It really didn’t matter the companies were concepts.

Limits to Growth School: I have labeled this school after the famous 1972 book of the same title: Limits to Growth. I read it as an impressionable sophomore and the message has stayed with me. Basically, the premise is that our population is growing exponentially and hence our demand on the planets resources which are finite. Exponential growth of consumption will at an ever increasing rate consume the resources quicker than we can possibly react. Without better planning and management of population and resources, the results could be devastating.

Populations grow exponentially and certainly tax the world’s natural resources at the same rate. But, with the advance of science and technology, we consume the resources at an even faster rate. Many of the advances that make life “better” are dependent on technology that is driven by petroleum or electricity. The burning of petroleum fuels for transportation and coal used to generate electricity are changing our climate and have an adverse effect on agriculture.

Both of these schools believe that they are right. The Free Market Economy School views the Limits to Growth School as doom and gloom tree huggers (or so I think). The Limits to Growth folks look at the Free Marketeers as short sighted and profit motivated. Neither side views the other in a very positive light.

Like most other topics, I do not adhere to either school exclusively. The truth is rarely in black or white. The truth often lies in the grey in a mix of both sides. Both views have valid points and solutions. The right path is probably a mix of the two points of view.

Population: First, we cannot talk about global resources without talking about the real and exponential growth of population which is currently 6.6 Billion people. Consider the following:

It took all of human history to reach a population of 1 Billion
people

103 years more to reach 2 Billion in 1930

30 more years to reach 3 Billion in 1960

14 years to reach 4 Billion in 1974

13 more years - 5 Billion in 1987

11 years to get to 6 Billion in 1998 &
11 more to get to 7 Billion in 2009

Projections:
2021 8 Billion
2035 9 Billion
2059 10 Billion

This dramatic growth in population has mirrored the industrial revolution. The two are definitely co-dependent. Without the Industrial Revolution and subsequent advances in mechanization for farming and distribution and chemicals for fertilization we would not be able to feed the number of people inhabiting the planet today.

With this dramatic growth of population, we have also tapped into the worlds resources at an ever increasing rate. There is serious talk of the great Saudi Arabian oil field, the Ghawar Field, of going dry in the next 2 -20 years. We use incredible amounts of resources. The average person cannot really comprehend the massive consumption of goods and the increase in the demand for goods and resources as the population continues to grow. Here are some distressing facts and projections from http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810#5

At least part of the rise in global consumption is the result of population growth. The U.N. projects that world population will increase 41 percent by 2050, to 8.9 billion people, with nearly all of this growth in developing countries.

This surge in human numbers threatens to offset any savings in resource use from improved efficiency, as well as any gains in reducing per-capita consumption. Even if the average American eats 20 percent less meat in 2050 than in 2000, total U.S. meat consumption will be 5 million tons greater in 2050 due to population growth.

Every day in 2003, some 11,000 more cars merged onto Chinese roads—4 million new private cars during the year. Auto sales increased by 60 % in 2002 and by more than 80 % in the first half of 2003. If growth continues apace, 150 million cars could jam China’s streets by 2015—18 million more than were driven on U.S. streets and highways in 1999.

As many as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water.

The U.N. reports that 825 million people are still undernourished; the average person in the industrial world took in 10 percent more calories daily in 1961 than the average person in the developing world consumes today.

Calculations show that the planet has available 1.9 hectares of biologically productive land per person to supply resources and absorb wastes—yet the average person on Earth already uses 2.3 hectares worth. These “ecological footprints” range from the 9.7 hectares claimed by the average American to the 0.47 hectares used by the average Mozambican.

Note that the population projection in the bullet point has the 2050 population at 8.9 billion. The table shown earlier has us somewhere around 9.5 billion. Which is correct? These are both forecasts and thus only time will confirm what will truly happen. The same can be said for oil reserves. These are directional trends which may or may not come true depending on a multitude of factors such as war, disease, and scientific advances.

Why is there a food shortage at this time?: I was in Knoxville, TN in April. I was at the University of Tennessee a Supply Chain Forum where Sanford Brands is one of the sponsoring companies. As part of the forum, we heard the latest research in the field of logistics and supply chain management. The cocktail hours were also a chance for us to meet and perhaps eventually hire MBA students. During a cocktail reception the first night, I had the opportunity to meet and chat with several impressive MBA students.

I ended the evening talking with two of students from India. We were talking about this current food crisis. As it turned out, they had done research on this subject. They had just returned from Argentina where they had witnessed acre upon acre of farmland that had recently been converted from wheat to corn. The wheat had been grown for food. The corn was now being grown for ethanol.

There is a lunacy to this. The articles I have read all state that producing a gallon of ethanol consumes at least as much energy as the gallon will deliver. There is no energy gain. It is a feel good scam that takes away from the world’s food supply.

Furthermore, the taste for beef is also an inefficient use of grain, often corn. It takes 700 calories of feed to product 100 calories of beef. The more beef consumed by more and more of the population, the further the strain on arable farmland. With the economic emergence of China, their increasing affluence has increased their demand for beef and hence an even accelerated demand on grains.

The Tennessee MBA students told me that we should not be having a food shortage. We still have the capability of feeding ourselves. They believe that pricing, supply and demand are in flux right now and will reach equilibrium. I believe they are right. I will believe in a real and true world food shortage when my front and backyard are turned into a mini-farm, a modern equivalent of a Victory Garden. I also hope we never have to get to that.

In this sense, I am agreeing with the Free Marketeers. We are in a commodity bubble right now. There are elements of greed, speculation, and the lunacy of feeling good by using renewable ethanol. Sadly, the shortages are only affecting the poorest people on the planet. Sure, Costco’s and Sam’s Club limited rice purchases in April to 25lbs of rice per visit. How did we ever manage?

OK. Maybe this current shortage is a commodity bubble. Maybe supply, demand, and price are simply being reset. Yet, the following is quite clear to me.

First, agriculture is now global. Actions in one part of the world can and do affect food supplies in other parts of the world. We have food riots in the poorest countries because of some combination of the Chinese eating more beef and more and more land being used to grow corn for ethanol. This is a recent phenomenon. Historically, food supply and demand tended to be much more localized. You would not have had a food riot in Egypt because of how farmland was being used in Argentina.

Secondly, the fragility of the system may well have been exposed with this commodity bubble. This may well have been a warning, the caged canary coughing a few times in the coal mine. We may well grow past our ability to feed everyone. The downside of this would be the addition of population to the equilibrium equation of supply, demand, and pricing. Simply said, people would die. They might die en masse.

Thirdly, while the market economy would react and adapt eventually, it may not be fast enough to avoid a disastrous period. Businesses think in terms of quarters. A strategic plan is, at best, only two to five years. Most businesses, no matter what they say, believe that resources are infinite. Their strategic plans are in line with their current product lines. Sure, prices may fluctuate with supply and demand but neither oil nor automotive companies are truly contemplating, beyond feel good advertising we are being bombarded with, the end of fossil fuels. If and when we reach the limits of our ability to feed ourselves, we will not be able to react fast enough to avoid some pretty tough times. Is this 5, 10, 50, or 100 years from now? This is the big question.

We may have time to solve this thing. It is entirely unclear if we have the organization and resolve to do this. It requires a level of planning and cooperation on a global scale that may only be dream.

I do like to dream…

April 2008: The Armenian Genocide – Take Five

Every year my April letter has been about the Armenian Genocide. It has always been about pointing out the injustice, railing against the Turkish Government, and trying to find some closure. The closure will be slow and tough to come.

Some years I rant and rave. Other years I am more introspective. I think this letter falls more into the introspective category.

April 3-5, 2008: April 4th was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. On April 4, 1968, I was in the ninth grade at Cadillac Junior High School in Detroit. I was thinking about going to high school. I was thinking about Cass Tech the magnet school one had to apply to. I was thinking about Cooley, the stately beautiful high school just two blocks from our home.

I might have gone to Cooley but Detroit was changing in those days. It was an increasingly less safe place to attend. Since the 1967 riots, white flight to the suburbs was in full swing. The demographics of the City of Detroit were changing. So, I opted to go to Cass Tech. I loved that school but only stayed there a semester because we moved to Livonia. We were part of the demographic changes.

I was in Atlanta, March 31 – April 2. Atlanta was his Dr. King’s lifelong home. There certainly was a lot of buzz about the anniversary in Atlanta. The Atlanta magazine that we somehow get at home, without ever subscribing to, had dedicated their entire April issue to the life, times, and sad ending of the good Dr.

I listen to his words today. They are so important, so right, so well crafted. He was a great thinker, orator, and leader. He seemed above it like Gandhi. Like Gandhi he was assassinated.

I, my family, we were all victims of J. Edgar Hoover’s smear campaign. We were led to believe that Dr. King was both a communist and a womanizer. Both of these accusations one false and the other a fabrication diminished the man in my parents and hence my eyes. Being black, he was already starting at a disadvantage.

Back then in 1968, it was 53 years since the beginning of the heinous acts of 1915. My family, in this case my grandparents and great-grandparents, was part of another demographic shift: The Armenian Genocide. They were lucky to have lived. But, they were removed from their homes and somehow with a combination of luck and fortitude made it to the United States. My Mother’s family settled in Detroit. We were part of a demographic change in 1915. We were part of another very different demographic change in the late sixties. We had much more freedom in the latter.

It strikes me very odd that many Armenians I knew growing up had a dislike for blacks. When I look back at both the Armenian Genocide and the life work of Martin Luther King, I am struck with one thing. Armenians for the most part focus on our own tragedy, almost exclusively. We can live in this great country and see little irony that we as disposed people live on the lands of disposed American Indians. There is no irony or guilt because we invoke, mostly subconsciously, that the injustices happened a long time ago and we had nothing to do with us. “We weren’t here then, we had nothing to do with it. The past is the past. That is so long ago.” This is not unlike what the modern day Turks say about the Armenian Genocide. Why aren’t we more empathetic?

Over time, I find this dichotomy increasingly shocking. Just who the hell do we think we are?

Of late, we are improving. We are acknowledging the ethnic cleansings in the Balkans and the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, mostly in our “never again” speeches. Yet, we never really seemed to associate with the civil rights movement. Only fifty years after the Genocide we were pretty focused and occupied with making what happened to us an issue and a movement. I do not believe we gave the civil rights movement much attention.

In the middle of these thoughts came an e-mail on April 5th written on April 4th from a long time friend. Manoog Kaprielian entitled Forty years ago when ‘HOPE’ was killed. He wrote over two thousand words on the life and message of Dr. Martin Luther King. I was quite happy to get this e-mail. It was just what I needed to feel a little bit better about the Armenian People. It does not surprise me at all that this relief came from Manoog.

Manoog is originally from Providence, RI a major US city from an Armenian perspective. He is a contemporary and has done something exemplary and very cool. He relocated to the Republic of Armenia. He is living in Yerevan, an expatriate in his ancestral home. From his reports, it sounds like it was a great move for Manoog and no doubt a great benefit to the citizens of Armenia that have come to know him.

His e-mail reflecting on the day “’Hope’ was killed” consists of nine moments and lessons from his serving in Vietnam through April 4th of this year. I will share Moment Nine:

MOMENT #9 (my draft number) Having written this in the middle of nowhere, this would have been delivered an hour earlier had I not left the keyboard for a take out order and simply asked the first man I saw about his memory of this day 40 years ago. His response was very rich. My weak Armenian and non-Russian language skills prevented absorption of the entire breath of this 59 year old native Armenian. His name was Gagik, and at 19 he was actually standing on the very same spot I ran in to him. He imparted, oh so much, of the Rev. King, his sermons, and the unforgettable cleansing feeling he once experienced from the worship and song of the Baptist Church. Can we all look back like Gagik? For if we could, we may be all the better to tend to our collective future. Can we simply go to the 'very same spot' forty years ago, pick up HOPE and move forward again?

Thank you Manoog and Gagik for the opening the door and letting a ray of hope in!

April 10, 2008: Professor Müge Göçek of the University of Michigan sent an e-mail through the Armenian Workshop Listserv entitled: Remembering Hrant Dink. The last sentence in her first paragraph really grabbed me:

And I want to draw on this occasion to once again remember Hrant Dink, to especially recall Dink’s passionate love for his ancestral land, for the soil and for the people dwelling on it.

I really related to this. I cannot begin to compare myself to Hrant Dink (see my April 2007 letter) who to me was both a zealous Armenian and Turk at the same time. But, I love my ancestral land, at least the parts I have seen in the current Republic of Armenia. But I knew I would love the land and the people well before I ever visited. The same can be said of the lands, our ancestral lands, lying in the Republic of Turkey the lands of the Armenian Highlands or Eastern Anatolia. (The photo at the top of this posting is Professor Göçek and me at the University of Michigan Armenian Club Dance, 1-25-08)

Like Hrant Dink, I think I would like the people living in those lands now. Certainly, Hrant Dink knew many more of them. But I have meet enough citizens of the Republic of Turkey be they Armenian, Turk, Kurd, or Gypsy to know I enjoy the people. Certainly, Professor Göçek is a perfect example. The Listserv she created and runs is a great forum for peoples who share these lands and have overlapping cultures and no doubt genetic codes to find common ground in a sea of hate and ignorant politics.

If I were living in Turkey, I am certain I would have the same feelings. I am equally certain I would not have the same feeling for all. It is hard to like or even tolerate those that hate you. I am even more certain that were I living in Turkey, probably harboring the same sense of right and righteousness as Hrant Dink did, But, I am equally sure that I would probably not be as brave a spokesman and force as he was.

April 20, 2008: Armenians and Turks do not speak the same language. We do not have the same religion. For over a hundred years, except for the few Armenians remaining in the Republic of Turkey, we have not lived together. Yet, amid all the politics and hatred, there are Armenians and Turks trying to kindle some hope for a better future for both peoples.

The culture overlaps. It has to; we lived on the same lands for hundreds of years. The citizens of Turkey probably have a lot more Armenian blood in them than they think, though probably not as much as we Armenians think.

The overlap is certainly in the food. But, the food extends over the entire region. I have seen ridiculous on-line arguments of whether Baklava is Greek or Turkish in origin.

To me, the overlap is in the music: the music I love and play. The music lies in the intersection of Armenian and Turkish cultures. This music touches my very heart and soul. It does the same for a lot of my family and friends. This is something I have known since I was a mere boy and felt with greater intensity since becoming a student of this music when I was a teenager.

YouTube.com, the on-line video posting and sharing website, has been a real bonus for those of us that like this music. We can watch the best of the music we like from Turkish television and concerts. We can and do share the best of what we see. It is both uplifting and a bit depressing all at once.

Late last year, I got the following link in an e-mail from the gifted Armenian-American musician Mal Barsamian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofsRfsg09Q. I clicked and listened to this song Çalsin Sazlar performed by Burhan Çaçan. Wow. I loved it. I played it over and over again. It was the essence of the music that I loved.

I showed it to my wife, Judy. She watched the first few seconds of it and blurted out, “Oh my God, we’re Turks!” Yes we are, or they are Armenian. Or the culture that goes to the heart and souls of both peoples are closer than most on both sides ever want to admit.

I forwarded the link to everyone I knew would enjoy it. They all had the same intense and warm reaction. I did buy the CD and noted a bit to my surprise that the song and words were attributed to a composer, Kenan Erel. It was not the folk song I thought it was but this is an incredible piece of music to me.

Burhan Çaçan is a Kurd from Erzerum (I think). This video was from a Turkish TV show. I was amazed at how the people looked like many people I know or have known. I was saddened by the continued White lingering part of the Genocide that began in 1915. In Turkey, they have TV shows playing the music I love. It is main stream. This part of Armenian culture is dying off.

I got the words to Çalsin Sazlar. The song is now in my repertoire. In fact, I sang it at the University of Michigan Armenian Club and dedicated it to Professor Göçek who led the dance.

YouTube has opened up a whole wonderful window. My musician friends and I share the best of what we find from classical to folk.

I have written that my family is from Kharpert. The city, rebuilt after an earthquake, is now known as Elaziğ shortened from the Ottoman name Mamûret'ül-Azîz. A folk song of the region is Çayda Çira. I remember my maternal Grandmother’s brother Samuel performing this song and sending us a tape from his home in Aleppo, Syria. I searched the song on YouTube and found several versions. This is my favorite and the clarinet reminds me very much of Samio Keri’s playing. If we were still there, we could have been in or even made this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvEGHltMGM

There is no end. Consider this very poor quality video. It is the beginning of a Belkis Akkale concert from the 1980s. It begins with a song on the cusp of Armenian and Turkish cultures. We know it as Ha Nina and it has been recorded by Harout Pamboukjian and others. Is it Armenian? Turkish? Kurdish? Note the famous Zurnaci (double reed horn player) Binali Selman featured in the beginning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umShcOB9bYw

On the classical side, here is a posted video of Kurdili Hicazkar Longa composed by the Armenian Kemani Sebuh (born 1857 in Istanbul and died 1937 in Cairo). Sebuh was a late Ottoman composer and violinist. This longa or prelude is still popular and performed both by cabaret and classical groups in Turkey and the Armenian Diaspora.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIJx5S412Zk&feature=related

If we go back to Elaziğ, here is another piece that greatly reminds me of Samio Keri. This Halay could easily be called Kharperti Halay as Elaziğ Dik Halayi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPHZ__cILqE

My friend Varoujan Vartanian is a son of Dickrangerd. He is a very good and popular singer growing up in Beirut and now in New York. Dickranagerd is now known as Diyarbekir. Here is a song from that region Hele Yar Zalin Yar that Varoujan sings in the Dickranagerd Armenian dialect. This version is from Izzet Altinmese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAF365Q8hJc

Hachig Kazarian and Richard Hagopian recorded a Dersim Medley on their first Kef Time Albums. These were great pieces. I noted that the person that posted the Elaziğ Dik Halayi had a YouTube name of Palulu1907. Interesting moniker, since in 1907 there were still Armenians living in Palu. More likely Palulu was born on July 19th. Palu is another city in the same region as is Dersim. I followed that link and found two the Dersim Medley tunes. What a fabulous group. Here are two of them, Dersim Dört Dağ İçinde and Bu Dere both performed by Muzaffer Ertürk. Bu Dere was also recorded in the 1930s or 40s by the Armenian oudist Marko Melkon in New York.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS8b9il5qWU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4OA8k10yTg&feature=user

Another song that Richard Hagopian sings that I love is Karadir Kaslarin. Here is a lovely duet version featuring Sevval Sam and Ferhat Göçer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHxXMYg_bfU

The most famous song on this Armenian – Turkish cusp is without doubt is Sari Gelin. There is even a book written about this song in Turkish. The foolish on both sides insist it is an Armenian, Turkish or Azeri song and that the despicable enemies stole it as their own. The title words have meaning in both Armenian and Turkish. Here are two versions. The first is sung by Nilufer Akbal in Armenian. The posting of the video is dedicated to Hrant Dink. The second in Turkish is by one of my favorite singers, Gulay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMgh3IEsHdE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYwGz94MCss

The master Armenian Oudist, Udi Hrant, sang Her Sabah, Her Seher (Every morning, every night). Armenians here, like me, still performing song. Hrant would sing “I play the saz all day long, people call me lazy.” John Bilezikjian has changed the words to “I play the oud all day long…” Here is a very nice version sung by Gülsen Kutlu with neither the oud nor saz line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeFiBTznsv0

Lastly, I have to include this short clip of Zara singing Yemen Turkusu. This song was written to commemorate the Ottoman soldiers who went, fought, and died in Yemen. It is yet another folk song of the Kharpert - Elaziğ region. It has double meaning today as an anthem to the Armenian Genocide because of the power full line in the chorus

giden gelmiyor, acep nedendir
all who left are not returning, why is that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J3KqI9tmKI

There are so many more songs I could reference here. I have probably already put too many. So, as have marked the 93rd Anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide listen to this music. Think of Martin Luther King a bit and his message of peace and living well together. Listen to Çayda Çira and think of my Samio Keri, a son of Kharpert. Listen to Sari Gelin and think of Muge Göçek reading this letter in Ann Arbor, MI and Manoog Kaprielian reading it in Yerevan, Armenia both dreaming of, hoping for, and working towards a better world.

March 2008: Tough Economy

Recession Cometh or Recession Here?: What is a recession? There is an official definition: two successive quarters of declines in the gross domestic product. We are not officially in a recession. But it sure seems like that if you watch the news, read the papers, or are trying to sell your house.

There is also humorous definition of recessions and depressions: If my neighbor loses his job it is a recession. If I lose my job, it is a depression.

Economists do not necessarily follow this rigid definition. On March 14th, the Wall Street Journal reported that in their survey of 51 economists, 71% said that the economy is now in a recession. So far in 2008, there was a net loss in jobs in January and February. This fact, in spite of the GDP still showing miniscule growth, led many of these economists to classify the slowdown as a recession.

How bad is the economy? I knew things were not that good. Gasoline prices are up. The dollar is worth less than it was a few years ago. The housing market is terrible due in large part to the crisis in the variable mortgage rates that got so many people in over their heads.

I was worrying about the softness in the office products business. Sales have been soft and while we are maintaining market share, we are selling less. I have asked myself if this is an aberration or a level change in demand. Hard to tell, but we mostly believe it is the economy.

Other than this there has not been much impact in my lifestyle. I still live about the same way I have been living. Sure it now costs $50 or more to gas up my car. It used to cost $25-30. It still kind of shocks me, but other than that, life goes on.

In late February, I was at our annual sales meeting. At the hotel, the USA Today was waiting every morning outside my door. I would peruse it with my first cup of coffee. My perusing focused on the business section for the most part. The stories depressed me. Everyday the week of February 23rd the Business Section of the USA Today had stories about the state of the economy. It really began me thinking.

First, it is way too easy for me to get caught up in the day to day and not pay enough attention to the news. Mostly, the only stories that I have been paying attention to or keeping an eye out for are

Colossal headlines of which, thankfully, we have not had many lately.

Stories about quality problems with imports from China – the recent story about the
tainted blood thinner heparin was quite disturbing

Whether Terrelle Pryor, the high school quarterbacking phenom, was going to choose to go to Michigan. He not only did not choose Michigan, but he decided to go to Ohio State!

Second, I realized that over the years as my career has progressed and my salary along with it, I am in a different economic bracket then I was in previous economic downturns. The increases in gasoline prices on those making $30 or 40,000 per year must be very tough. I am fortunate enough to be able to absorb this kind of price jump easier than most. This second thing bothered me a bit. This shows that I am not as in touch as I thought. I will have to work on that.

One of the USA Today stories stuck with me. On February 26, 2008, the lead article in the USA Today business section entitled “Consumers cut back on small pleasures.” Here are some examples of what was reported in the article:

A yacht salesman who used to by Power Bars at his health club for $1.59 now buys Tiger Milk bars from Trader Joe’s for $.59.

A VP of marketing and his wife for a theater company used to spend $40 a month for Evian water. Now they fill a water bottle with tap water. The same couple used to spend $8 a bar for soap The Body Shop. Now, they buy Irish Spring or Dial at Walgreen’s and only when it is on sale.

A legal secretary was spending $55 a month for Iced Mocha Lattes at Starbuck’s for $3.86 a pop. She now makes her own using Folgers and chocolate syrup for a fraction of the cost.

A college professor used to buy designer jeans costing $100. Now she buys jeans at
the Gap Outlet for $19.95.

A couple in Ohio were spending $170/month at MacDonald’s for lunch. They now make their own lunch and brown bag it.

The paper’s website offered readers to comment on their own savings initiatives and posted the responses. A majority of the responses talked about not so much saving pennies here and there on coffee or bottled water but eliminating credit card debt which could easily cost hundreds of dollars a month. They are absolutely correct when you consider the following:

The average American household with at least one credit card has nearly $9,200
in credit card debt, according to CardWeb.com, and the average interest rate
runs in the mid- to high teens at any given time. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson9/

Doom & Gloom: The USA Today articles I read were certainly gloomy. Were they reporting on what was actually going on or are they adding to peoples fears and hastening a recession? One could argue the case either way.

One thing I have noticed is that at or near the onset of a recession or economic downturn, there is always a flurry of books that try to cash in on the fears of people. Over the years, I have seen books with bold titles like DEPRESSION 19XX (fill in the year) or The Coming Economic Disaster. I wonder who buys these kinds of books and how they use them.

For this letter, I went to Amazon.com and did a search on recession. The following books appeared:

Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Upcoming Economic Collapse - published in 2007

Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes – published in 2007

The Second Great Depression: Beginning 2007, Ending 2020 – published in 2005

America’s Bubble Economy: Profit when it Pops – published in 2006

America's Financial Apocalypse: How to Profit from the Next Great Depression – published in 2006

The doom and gloom books are certainly out there. I probably will not buy any of them and thus will not be able to profit from this recession. But, I will keep an eye out for them on the remainder table at Barnes and Noble in a few years.

Restaurants: I read another doom and gloom article in the March 4th USA Today. This one was about the $555B restaurant industry. This article focused mostly on chain restaurants in the casual dining category. Same store sales in this segment were down. The dinner hour was hurting the most being down 2% year over year.

Same store sales were actually up .3% at the largest restaurant chains. The article called this growth “paltry.” MacDonald’s actually had a very good 2007. They recovered from their lackluster performance of a few years ago. Their dollar menu was the right move for this market.

Marc Buehler, the CEO of Lone Star Restaurants which just closed 27 of 179 stores, said “In the lifespan of casual dining, we haven’t seen economic times like this.” The Ruby Tuesday chain has also been hit hard. They experienced a 10.5% fall in business just in the fourth quarter. They are mostly based in malls and probably rely on mall traffic and impulse. If people aren’t going to the malls, this would hurt them. People went to the mall to Christmas shop. They might have been spending their money in stores and passed on dining. Richard Johnson, SVP of Ruby Tuesday said, “Unlike paying the mortgage, going out to eat is discretionary and can be changed easily.”

Starbucks: Starbucks qualifies as part of the casual dining industry. It is an interesting harbinger of the economy for me. There are a few reasons for this. First, I am a pretty good customer. Second, I have always wondered way we pay so much for coffee especially in a downtown. Witness the lady mentioned earlier who gave up her Iced Mocha Lattes for home brew.

On May 5, 2006, Starbucks stock was $39.63. This was the highest ever for the coffee chain. On March 19, 2008, Starbucks stock was closed $18.24. To look at the graph, there has been a steady decline since the high. In the fourth quarter of 2007, their transactions were down 3% though same store sales for stores open over a year were up like 7% in both December and January. Part of the stock decline this year is attributed to this growth being below the 10% expected from analysts.

Starbucks has been expanding rapidly. They have, perhaps, 13,000 or so stores around the world. I have worried that the were trying to outdo the struggling clothing retailer The Gap whose goal some ten years ago was to have a store in every zip code. Starbucks wants to have multiple stores in each zip code. They seem to have one on every other block in Manhattan.
They just open two stores in my world. One is walking distance from my house and is placed in between two stores on the same street, Waukegan Road, about eight miles apart. There is another in downtown Lake Forest. One just opened on Butterfield Road less than a mile east of my office. This compliments the store less than one mile west of my office. All of these stores seem busy. It amazes me. But consumers are fickle and their tastes change. Competitors also do not take things passively.

Witness again The Gap. They led the surge of business casual with the dot com popularization of khakis and blue oxford shirts. Gap Khakis became all the rage. Gap, originally launched to sell Levi’s, rapidly expanded their stores focusing exclusively on their own brand. There seemed no end to their growth. Often when retail growth and power seem to have no limit or end, we are actually at the apex. In the end, Gap sold clothes. Others started offering the same and better, the same and cheaper, and segmenting the market. The Gap thought that any innovation would lead the market i.e. they had the Midas complex thinking anything they would do would turn to gold. They lost market share and ended up paring back their stores and men’s fashion. There is little buzz about The Gap these days.

The same could be happening to Starbucks. The may well have saturated the market in the US. Competitors like MacDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts are trying very hard to take some of the coffee store market share from them. I stop sometimes in the morning at a Circle K share for a 16 oz coffee that costs $1.25 versus the Starbucks equivalent that is $2. Plus, I have a card from Circle K that gives me every sixth cup free. A recent Consumers Reports rated MacDonald’s Premium Coffees as being the best… better than Starbucks.

Recently, as you might imagine in such a decline of share price, there have been management changes at Starbucks. Howard Schultz who grew the chain to a global icon took over again as CEO from Jim Donald. Schultz claims that he will restore luster and growth to the chain by focusing again on what Starbucks is all about: coffee. A few years ago they stopped grinding coffee beans at each store. They moved to pre-ground coffee probably to save time and money. The chain is now investing in new equipment that will grind and brew on a grander automated scale. Schultz said, “you will not be able to find a fresher cup of coffee on the planet.”

Schultz claims it is not the economy but more Starbucks losing focus providing both excellent coffee and coffee shop ambiance for their customers. He is eschewing suggestions that he lower prices or provide other discount like incentives. He may be right or a combination of over expansion, the economy, and intensified competition may have permanently changed the landscape. We shall see.

Housing & Mortgages: A large part of this downturn is the shambles that housing market is in. This is largely due to complete mess all these sub-prime variable rate mortgages caused. People and companies were in a feeding frenzy during the recent red hot housing bubble. People were buying and mortgaging themselves to the hilt. Others were flipping houses, buying, making a few repairs, and then selling the property for a profit a few months later. It was crazy and apparently could not last… it clearly did not.

I never ever felt variable rate mortgages were a good idea. They are not good for consumers and therefore are not good for lending institutions. The problem is that people and companies easily are wooed into believing that nothing negative will happen. The problem is also that bubbles are fragile. They burst. You can make money in kind of an arbitrage way as many did house flipping. But, a variable rate mortgage over many years can and, now clearly, has burned many. Consumers are in dire straits because of it as are companies such as Bear Stearns.

I am a puzzled that the government has not stepped in with money so that people can refinance at a reasonable fixed rate. After all, we are spending an ungodly amount on this war which has probably also contributed to our economic woes. A bit, and I am sure it is a bit, more national debt to stabilize the housing market and help citizens sounds like a good idea to me. Then, I think a lending practice regulation should be put in place to prevent this kind of craziness in the future.

OK… that is it for this month. I have to go, my little espresso maker full of economic yet tasty Costco Kirkland brand coffee is beckoning me.

February 2008: Anniversary Letter

February 9-10, 2008 Opportunistic Randomness: I began this letter in February 2004. It is now February 2008 and using my advanced degrees in both mathematics and statistics, I can say that I just completed my fourth year of this project and beginning the fifth. This is the fifth February letter.

When I began, I did not know how long this project would last. I was not sure if it would make one year, let alone four. I am quite happy that it has gone this far. I am energized to keep it going as long as possible.

I recently was on the panel at my alma mater. The event was entitled Career Paths in Mathematics and the panel consisted of graduates of the Mathematics Department. I was the elder statesman, i.e. the oldest person, on the panel. We had to comment on how having a degree in math helped us with our career and give some advice to the students in the audience.

I opened with up with a statement, trying to appeal to the audience, that my entire career has been kind of a random walk. Why did I major in mathematics? Quite simply when it was time to choose a major, at the end of my sophomore year, mathematics was the only thing I had taken consistently. It was the only major that would assure that I would graduate on time.

This kind of lack of planning and random opportunity followed me or rather opened doors in front of me as my career developed. It began with music. I really wanted to play the clarinet. There were two reasons for this. First, my Grandmother’s brother, Samuel Frankian, played the clarinet. He lived in Aleppo, Syria and would send us tapes of his band playing the music I love so much. Secondly, I grew up in the Detroit Armenian Community when the great Clarinetist Hachig Kazarian was emerging as a world class talent. Every Armenian kid wanted to play the clarinet… like Hachig.

When it came time for instrumental music in grade school, I, of course chose the clarinet. I was so excited and so nervous the first day that I flunked the simple tone test the teacher gave. I was supposedly tone deaf (no comments from my musician friends on how I am still suffering from this affliction). At the age of ten, I thought my music career was over. A few weeks later, one of my friends was going to violin lessons and asked me to join him. I am still not sure why but I went with him. That worked out quite well. The violin led to the guitar which led to the oud which I am still playing, performing and recording to this day.

There are more career centric examples. For example, I learned Ford was hiring from the father of a girl I was dating in college. He gave me an application. I filled it out without a clue of what I might do there. Shortly later, Ford Human Resources called me and said they wanted to talk to me. I ended up talking with the managers of the Warranty Analysis and Reliability Engineering Departments with the Body and Electric Product Engineering group at Ford. The Warranty folks offered me a job because of my math background. I took it.

It was my first real job. My responsibilities were to analyze the first few months of warranty claim reports and predict if there were emerging problems that would cause consumer unhappiness, excess warranty costs, and, worst of all, a possible recall. It was interesting but not too challenging. I learned how a large corporation worked. I made excellent friends.
The next kind of, sort of, random event was the emergence of the quality movement in the automotive industry in the early 1980s. In 1980, NBC aired a “white paper” news show entitled, “If Japan Can… Why Can’t We?” It was produced by Claire Crawford Mason and narrated by Lloyd Dobbins. This show was dawning of the quality revolution in the US and specifically the automotive industry. This TV special, which was quickly available on video and shown over and over again in company meetings, introduced on Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a US based statistician and quality expert.

Deming had taught a short course in Japan after WWII at the invitation of General MacArthur. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) offered Deming an honorarium which he declined. The Japanese then used the money they had offered Deming to establish a national quality award which they named the Deming Prize. It quickly became an award that the corporations in Japan took quite seriously. The white paper noted how this prestigious and coveted, quality award was named after an American that almost no Americans had ever heard of.

Shortly, Ford engaged Dr. Deming to come and consult in the company. I was offered the chance to go to some of these first lectures by Deming simply because I had a degree in Math, worked in Warranty Analysis, and frankly my management was not sure who to send. So, I went, it was another major turning point in my career and it was relatively random in that it was nothing I planned.

Less than a year later, the exact same thing happened when Ford brought in Dr. Genichi Taguchi the proponent of using Designed Experiments and a unique form of Multi-Criteria Optimization in both product design and quality improvement. The door was opened and I walked through. None of this was planned, but they defined my career. I became an expert in Quality Management even though I had no clue what those two gurus were talking about in those first few lectures.

I decided to get a masters degree to assist in what was now a business career. I contemplated going for an MBA, which I really truly should have done. But, I did not. I randomly came across a brochure from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Wayne State University in Detroit. They were touting their MS as a technical MBA. I bit. Luckily, Professors Kailish Kapur and Leonard Lambert were there. They wrote a definitive book on Reliability Engineering. My technical MBA quickly became a master’s in quality management and optimization.

With the quality movement going crazy in the 1980s, we were all heavily recruited. I went to Rockwell Automotive and then TRW’s Seat Belt Division. I loved Rockwell. I worked there five years. I worked with George Mouradian. I also worked for Bob Adams one of the best bosses I have ever had. It was a fun and challenging place to work. I developed a software package for Life Data Analysis to predict the reliability of the heavy truck brakes, axles and drivelines that were the main products of this firm.

TRW was a tough place to work. With the stroke of a pen, a $200 Million seat belt company became the exclusive and sole supplier to seat belts and air bags to Ford Motor Company. It became a $2 billion business. The staffing and capabilities of the company were hardly suited to easily accommodate this ten fold growth. They hired like crazy. I was one of the crazies that were hired. We had to gain experience and implement business practices and policies to handle the increased volumes and intense pressures the sudden growth caused.

The act of opportunistic randomness was that just before joining TRW, I got a call from a head hunter inquiring about a job in New York with Colgate. Yikes, New York! Not the Auto Industry! It was definitely out of my comfort zone though it sounded like an intriguing adventure and opportunity. But, I was about to go to TRW, so I told them no. Then the head hunter said, “You know the VP of Quality there is Harry Artinian formerly of Ford Motor Company.” I knew Harry, though not very well. He was also Armenian. So, I asked, “Did Harry give you my name?” He responded that Harry had not. Then I said, “Tell Harry you called me and see what he says.” Within the hour Harry called me back. This began a nine month process of me eventually going to Colgate.

I was hired into Colgate’s Total Quality department. Colgate was an insular company that did not take to outside ideas or outsiders very well. Harry quickly was out of the company, but our core group, all of us from the outside, got a Colgate born and bred VP Bob Martin another favorite boss. We retooled and “Colgatized” our approach from Total Quality to the “little bit better every day in everyway” Continuous Improvement Group.

In this transformation, opportunistically, we shifted our business focus as well. Colgate’s pressing quality problems were really more service related than product related. Our focus changed from product quality to service quality. Service quality in this case was the ability to effectively and efficiently process and deliver customer orders. Service quality quickly gave way to logistics and supply chain management, which is the focus of my career today.
Sure, I had planned to go to college. Sure, I had planned to have a job (I was not really thinking career back then) and to work hard and succeed at that job. I had a general direction to go but not a definitive plan like others who always knew they wanted to be an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, or a physician. No one I knew ever said they wanted to be logistician or quality engineer.

This monthly letter also falls into this category. I started a daily writing project on my 49th birthday with the goal of documenting a transformation or rather the passing of my fiftieth year. I had some vague notion of turning it into a book on turning fifty. It was a general direction but no definitive plan. Then in January of 2004, I learned of the amazing life and monthly letter of Aram Kevorkian. I immediately knew what to do with my daily writing. Unfortunately, this door opened after the esteemed American-Armenian lawyer in Paris passed away. I never got to meet this remarkable man.

February 16, 2008 – Other Writers: I have read two books since I wrote my August 2007 on Summer Reading. I read The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. At the end of December, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. These books were sitting on the shelf in my study for months. I read Ms. Shafak’s book first for a most simple reason. In my August letter, I spelled her name wrong. Nadya Uygun, a faithful reader and friend corrected me via e-mail. I felt both stupid and somehow obligated to read this book.

Ms. Shafak’s book was very good. She is an excellent writer and weaved a wonderful tale, examining the Armenian-Turkish issue from both sides and how much they are intertwined. She explored these issues from the struggles of Armenians trying to stay Armenian in the US, the whir and hum of life in modern Istanbul, and yet seasoned with the mysticism of the Istanbul of yore. It is well worth reading by anyone interested in good literature and things Armenian and Turkish.

As much as I liked Ms. Shafak’s book, I liked Mr. Hosseini’s The Kite Runner even more. I really loved this sad story set around the transition of Afghanistan from before the Soviet invasion through the iron fisted rule of the Taliban. It was mesmerizing. Mr. Hosseini’s writing was not obviously brilliant. It was subtly brilliant. The passages entranced and, to repeat the word, mesmerized. I found a fascination for a country and people I only knew through CNN reports. I found a longing for the old Afghanistan. It is well worth reading.

The other example of excellent writing is anything from the author Michael Pollan. I have read four of his pieces in the New York Times Magazine. He writes about food. He educates us on the effects the food industry and supply chains have on the quality of our food and our well being. He is very readable and engaging. I admire the ability to make the topics he chooses easily interesting and accessible to anyone who reads his article. The last article of his that I read was entitled, “You are what you grow,”from the April 22, 2007 New York Times Magazine. If anyone wants, e-mail me and I will forward this article to you.

February 17, 2008 – Pens: In my February 2005 letter, I wrote about when I write each day and the pens I use to write with. I wrote last year about the serendipity, random opportunity in this year’s parlance, to now work for writing instrument company. I have forsaken the Caran D’Ache ball points I truly loved for ball point products of the company I work for: Parker, Waterman, and Paper-Mate.

This year there was another change. I have evolved from ball points to gel pens. I would say that 80% of the time I write with a gel pen. Our brand is Uni-Ball. Uni-Ball is a product of Mistubishi Pencil of Japan. We are their exclusive distributor and marketer in the US - http://www.uniball-na.com/. My weapon of choice is the Jetstream RT (RT for Retractable). They write incredibly smooth and bold.

There is a price, however, for the bold lines and ultra-smooth writing. The ink is used up at a much faster rate than ball points or roller balls. Gel pens use a water based ink that is more organic in nature making less stable than most ball point inks. As a result, one refill may write perfect and another may write inconsistently with faint lines or skips. But, when they work which is most of the time, they are unbeatable.

When people find out I work for a pen company, they say how they really like gel pens. More often than not, they mention a particular brand and model, the Pentel G-2 and ask if that is ours. I explain that it is our competition and that our brand is Uniball. The G-2 is a fine product I bought a few to test. But try the Uniball Jetstream, I think it is better.

To end, allow me to provide this odd but interesting website: www.instructables.com/id/Save-%24200-in-2-minutes-and-have-the-worlds-best-wr/. It gives step by step on how to trim and put a Mont Blanc refill into a G-2 body. They claim to transform a $2 pen into a $200 pen. There is so much to comment on this, but I will leave it for another letter.

Thanks for all your encouragement and comments on this most rewarding project.

January 2008: Be it Resolved

As I write this, we are already twenty days into the New Year. There is an internet consensus that about half of Americans make resolutions. One website, last updated in 2005, claimed this is down from 88%.

I expected to find some good statistics. But they were not to be found. What are the most popular resolutions? What percentage of people stick to their resolutions and for how long? How many make it through a week? Two week? A month? These statistics vary.

The consensus of the sites I looked at confirmed the following. The most popular resolutions are, as you might suspect, quitting smoking, losing weight, getting fit, getting control of one’s finances, spending more time with ones family/loved ones, and reducing stress. The big three are definitely smoking, weight and fitness.

I did find out that FranklinCovey, a company specializing in planning and organization tools and methods, has just completed their third annual New Year’s resolution survey. Their top ten resolutions according to this survey for this year were:

1. Get out of debt or save money
2. Lose weight
3. Develop a healthy habit (e.g., exercise or healthy eating)
4. Get organized
5. Develop a new skill or talent
6. Spend more time with family and friends
7. Other
8. Work less, play more
9. Break an unhealthy habit (e.g., smoking, alcohol, overeating)
10. Change employment
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071218/20071218005203.html?.v=1

Regarding how long people stuck with their resolutions, the information was a little fuzzy. Some websites claimed that 25% of people had abandoned their resolutions after one week. The number that abandoned their resolutions after two weeks jumped to almost 40%.

The FranklinCovey survey found that 35% of their respondents give up on their resolutions by the end of January. Eventually, 77% abandon the resolutions. The reasons given for abandonment are too many other things to do (40%) or never fully being committed to them (33%).

FranklinCovey customers buy and presumably use organizers. They tend to make to-do lists and try to execute them. We could arguably say that they are more organized then the general population. To me, the statistic that 77% of FranklinCovey customers abandon their resolutions is daunting.

There was one website that was advocating an alternative, more new age or spiritual set of resolutions:

1. Accept your own mortality
2. Remember that not everyone worships the same god, and respect that.
3. Remember that the world seemed simpler because you knew less about it.
4. Cultivate a garden
5. Wear comfortable clothing
6. Spend time thinking
7. Insist on formality
8. Eat something strange
9. Remove your shoes
10. Have a day in bed
www.associatedcontent.com/article/101216/10_best_new_years_resolutions.html

I don’t necessarily advocate this list, but I think it is a worthwhile exercise to review the list and think how you might revise them to fit your own life. A “be nicer to everyone” resolution has a certain intrigue. It may be easier to quit smoking or lose weight than to “be nicer to everyone.”

One thing is probably certain. Setting goals, setting resolutions, does indicate that one has a desire to change something or to improve oneself. If goals are not set, there is little likelihood there will be much change or improvement. There is an old quality management adage that if you do not establish measures, you will not know what to improve. If you then do not keep track of the measures over time you will never know if you have improved or if anything you have implemented actually had any impact.

So, establishing a resolution indicates that you have thought about changing or improving something. It means you have thought about you life and aspirations. You have thought about change and betterment.

Wanting to change, wanting to improve is the first step. It is like another old adage, this one about addictions. Admitting one has a problem is the first step towards overcoming the problem and changing for the better. This, like setting a resolution, is first step toward changing and improving.

Unfortunately, this first step is the easiest. No matter what the motivation, desire, or fear of continuing on the current path, setting the objective, writing the resolution is simple to do. It requires a little brainpower, interest in changing, and some language skills. For example:

I resolve to:

· Lose 25 pounds
· Drive the speed limit
· Stick to my New Year’s Resolutions this year
· Be nicer to others
· Watch less TV
· Avoid idle gossip
· Never kill another insect even the creepiest scariest one that has no business
being in my house.
· Return all business e-mails the same day and all personal e-mails by the
next day
· Write a monthly e-letter to friends and family
· Learn to play a well tempered clavier
· Call my parents every day
· Complete my to-do list everyday.
· Become self-actualized
· Dis-associate myself with anyone who uses the term “self-actualized”

Feeble attempts at humor aside, there are guidelines for setting resolutions. One method is to use the SMART principle to set resolutions. SMART is a set of principles to set resolutions or objectives properly. These guidelines are very popular in business. SMART is an acronym for:

Specific: Vague goals are hard to achieve. Be specific in what you want to do. “I resolve to be better” is not real helpful. “I resolve to be a better leader” is better but could still be improved upon.

Measurable: How will you know if you achieve your goal without a measure. “I resolve to lose 25 pounds and keep it off” is measurable. You know when you hit the first part of the goal, and you can continue monitoring it.

Achievable: “I resolve to run the 100 meter dash in the Olympic Games” while being Specific and Measurable is unachievable for someone this side of fifty. “I resolve to run the 100 meter dash in an AARP Olympics” is specific, measurable, and achievable… though it just doesn’t sound as
thrilling.

Revisable: Maybe losing 25 pounds by the end of the year is too much. Maybe after six months, it may make sense to lose 15 pounds and then 10 more the next year. There is nothing wrong with this. You would still be making progress.

Timely: There must be a horizon over which you want to achieve the goal. The beauty of New Year’s resolutions is that the time period is, by default, a year.

A resolution, thus, is nothing more than an objective or goal. Normally, we only use the word resolution for objective and goals we make at the beginning of the year. If we decide to quit smoking on August 12th, it would not be called a resolution. We would just say “I quit smoking today” or “I decided to quit smoking.”

But resolution is a good word. We resolve to do this or that. It sounds so much stronger than simply deciding to do something. We decide to watch a football game. We decide to have steak and decide to have it prepared medium rare. We decide to buy the Honda Civic instead of the Ferrari we really want.

But, when we resolve, it implies that we have really mulled the decision over and given it great consideration. Resolutions have more of a ring of commitment than mere decisions. No one resolves to buy a Honda Civic, but people do resolve to consume less energy and “that is why I decided to buy the Honda Civic that gets 35 miles per gallon.” No one resolves to have a decaf coffee, but people resolve to cut caffeine out of their diet and that is why “I am ordering the decaf latte.”

Setting the resolution is easy, living the resolution is the challenge. Most of the resolutions we set require habitual change. It is not something easily done but requires dedication and constancy of purpose (yes, like Dr. Deming’s famous 1st point). We are talking about quitting smoking, losing weight, getting fit, improving one’s blood chemistry, or as I have kind of sort of quasi-resolved this year, getting organized. These kinds of resolutions require changing ones behaviors that have been deeply set over a period of years.

Mark Twain said, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times." This is a great quote and is cited all over the internet. In his humorous way, Mark Twain captured the essence and difficulty in these kinds of behavior modifications. It requires constant vigilance and effort. It involves avoiding temptation that often results in backsliding and maybe even abandoning the resolution.

There is plenty of advice for sticking to ones objectives. Most are in news articles that were prevalent the first few weeks of the New Year. The advice is varied and not every bit appeals to everyone. One should pick and choose what will work best for them. The lists overlap a quite a bit. I will use the list of Dr. Judith Orloff, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and author of the book, Positive Energy as found on www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/29/earlyshow/health/main663635.shtml (her points, my words).

Keep a positive attitude: This is key. As soon as you start looking at this as a burden or a chore, you will suffer and struggle. The path of least resistance is to give up. There will be tough spots. A positive attitude will carry you

Avoid energy vampires: People you routinely interface with often tend to enable and are used to the behavior you are trying to change. They may try to lure you back to those habits, contrary to your resolution, because they enjoy the old you they are used to. They may simply be jealous of your efforts to change and want to see you fail. Rather than avoid people you might really like, I would say the goal is to manage energy vampires.

Practice self-compassion: A slip up, a back-slide, does not have cause collapse and giving-up on the resolution. Cut yourself a break for an occasional slip-up and resume your quest. This particular bit of advice for me is a slippery slope. This compassion thing sounded so good, I tried it one during one of my weight loss attempts. I got so good at being compassionate with myself, the frequency of slip-ups became hardly occasional and I actually gained weight.

Set realistic goals: We covered this in the SMART objective discussion above.

Don’t compare yourself to others: The resolution is about you. It is about your improvement and betterment. It is doing your personal best. I could use Lance Armstrong as a cycling inspiration but comparing myself to him… that could easily dampen my positive attitude.

Celebrate your successes: Set interim shorter term goals, maybe weekly, maybe monthly. If you achieve them, then celebrate… a little. The celebration should not be a slip-up requiring you to invoke self-compassion.

Then, of course, there is Mark Twain method. If you fail, keep trying. Never give up, eventually you will make it.

What is my resolution for this year? As mentioned earlier, it is to be more organized. I am not good at organizing things either in files or in my laptop, though I am better on the laptop. In the physical world, I tend to keep things in desktop piles. I should organize and desktop file papers requiring action. One acted on, the papers should be filed in an appropriate hanging file. After a year, tax related documents should be saved in that year’s tax file and the rest discarded.

Furthermore, I want to organize my calendar and to-do lists so that I do not miss meetings or deadlines. I want to prioritize that which must be done more effectively.

I know what to do, I just don’t do it. Being organized is one of those things I have to a little bit everyday. Why are these kinds of things so hard? For me, this is a clear case of “Knowing Never equals Doing.”

How am I doing so far? Ehhhh… I am at risk of being part of that 77% in the FranklinCovey survey. But I am not giving up. I am keeping a positive attitude and I am practicing a lot of self-compassion.

Some Random Quotes:

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden

What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.
- Abraham Maslow

Goals are dreams with deadlines
- Diana Scharf Hunt, a time-management expert I never heard of but seems best known for this quote.

December 2007: TV Land

The Old Days: I am thinking about television and the evolution thereof. As I was growing up, I was taught that Edison invented the light bulb and the phonograph, Henry Ford invented the car, and the Wright brothers invented the airplane. I thought the television to be every bit as significant and magnificent but when I asked no one could tell me who invented it. How odd. But it was my first exposure to corporate product development. RCA had a large role in the late stage development and commercialization. http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television_Time.htm (I later came to learn that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile but actually the assembly line that made autos economically and quickly.)

I remember not having a TV set in the house. I remember when my father brought one home. I believe I was in kindergarten. It was a monstrosity of a box with an incredibly small screen. It was more like an oscilloscope than a TV. It was the size of a large orange crate with like a ten inch screen.

That TV and even the one that replaced it a few years later needed constant attention. It was before the days of transistors and “solid state” electronics as they used to call it. The TVs were full of vacuum tubes that were always burning out. My dad would open the back of the set and pulled the tubes that looked suspect, had black spots on them. We would go to the local drug or hardware stores. They both had tube testers in which you would plug in the suspect tubes and hit a test button; the machine would tell you if the tube was good or bad. We would buy a new tube and go back and try to fire up the TV. It often seemed to require more than one trip to get the TV operational again. What the mean time between failures? It seemed like it was 45-60 days but that is pure SWAG at this point.


Tubes were relatively easy to test and replace. It was something we could do ourselves. Anything else required the need of a TV repairman or taking it to the TV repair shop. That was usually a horrible and costly experience in terms of waiting for the repairman, being price gouged, and usually not having ones TV for several days. Back then, this was a major hardship as most of the households in our socio-economic class had just one TV in the house.

I often chuckle when I consider that since 1990 we have had more TVs in our house than people. Many folks have TVs in the main living or family room, the kitchen, the bedrooms, and recreation rooms or dens. Back then in the incessant TV repair days, it would have been considered decadent and excessive to have TVs in the kitchen and bedrooms. Now it is simply commonplace.

Beyond the repairs, the TVs needed constant fiddling when they were working properly. We were constantly adjusting the horizontal and vertical holds, dialing the fine tuning, and, of course, playing with the antennae. You could be watching something in glorious black and white, no problems, and then, all of a sudden, the picture would go wacky. Dad or I were up in a jiffy playing with the dials to bring the picture back. Most of the time, this was easily done. Other times, we did the best we could and ended up watching with random flickers or even ghost images.

What an improvement today’s TVs are. The solid state electronic tuning self adjusts and cable makes the signal digital and quite stable. Almost nothing ever goes wrong with the TVs either. When something does, it is often easier to simply replace them rather then repair them.
Innovations: There have been innovations to the television over the years. Certainly, the advent of color was huge. Certainly, the recent development of large flat screens and HD is quite impressive. Is there any other way to watch football these days? Even surround sound has given us the term Home Theater. Yet, the most important developments from my perspective are the remote control and cable/dish TV.

There were remotes as far back as the early 1960s. They were electromechanical as they actually, physically turned the channel knob by sending a radio beam to TV. They were expensive and I am guessing because they never really caught on, they were not too reliable.

In childhood, I had a friend whose father was alcoholic, domineering, and oddly kind of endearing. He did not have a remote control, yet he never changed the channel himself. He would bellow for his son to come and change it. In the summer, his voice could be heard outside while his son was playing baseball with the neighborhood kids. It was pretty funny and his habit became something of legend.

Remote controls became commonplace when TVs went solid state. Instead of being electromechanical devices, they were pure electronic. The first remotes made noise because the knob was physically turned. The electronic innovation made it more silent, instant, and much more effective.

The remote allowed men to channel surf. Women rarely seem to do this. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld summed it up best when he said, “men don’t care what is on TV, they only care what else is on TV.” This might be the truest maxim ever uttered by a comedian. Channel surfing is the art of watching what else is on TV. It is the constant search for a show that probably doesn’t exist. It speaks to the short attention span of the surfer and is totally irritating to others watching the same TV but not holding the remote control or “clicker.” Channel surfing is the reason most households have more TVs then people.

My father was one of the pioneering channel surfers. It began in the era where there was still only one TV in the house. It was pre-cable. With both UHF and VHF stations, there were probably 10-12 channels to watch. This first remote did not have a key pad meaning that one could not dial in any channel at any time. One could only move one channel up or down at a time. It was a crude instrument.

Dad quickly became a master of this new sport of channel surfing. We would all be watching something and then, we would be watching something else. But it wasn’t abrupt or noticeable, it was quite subtle. He kept the remote at his side; you didn’t know he had it in his hand. He would fire from the hip to maintain the stealth profile. His true genius and great innovation was when he changed the channel. He always used the blank second between TV show and commercial, or a similar blank transition within a particular show or movie. It was silent and virtually undetectable. As my mother and sisters were not expecting surfing of this caliber in these early days of the modern remote control, it would take up to five minutes before they realized they weren’t watching the Errol Flynn movie any more. They would start questioning, “hey what happened to the movie, who changed the channel.” My dad would sit there stoic and act unaware. I could detect a wry smile however. It was pretty hilarious back then. Nowadays, everyone knows and expects men to channel surf. It is not as big a deal today. If anyone really just wants to watch one show, they simply move on to another television.

I do believe that the cable folks put soft porn on late night TV basically as a speed bump to the male channel surfing population.

The other great innovation is that of cable and dish TV. With cable, we have gone from the original 3 or 4 channels to 300-400 channels. There are channels catering to every whim and need. There are a dozen news channels, another half a dozen dedicated to financial news, there are nature, science, history, and shopping channels. There are dozens of movie channels: old movie, new movie, suspense movie, mystery movie, and comedy movie channels. There are channels for local weather, heck there are 2-3 channels just dedicated to weather. One can watch local school pageants and sporting events on the public access station. In DC, there is even a station that broadcasts the departure and arrival screens at National and Dulles airports. If all this were not enough, we now have pay per view and free on-demand movies and TV shows. The offerings are limitless.

Oddly, with this virtually limitless, I often find myself saying, “wow there is nothing on.” The same was true when we only had 4 channels. It is amazing that it is also true with 500 channels. There was a New Yorker cartoon a few years ago that captured this. A man is sitting in an easy chair with a clicker in his hand aimed at a TV. He was saying “398, 399, 400… darn there is nothing on.”

This being said here are two recent TV experiences in which there actually was something worth watching with minimal surfing.

December 23rd: Most of the year it is dark when I wake up for work. About 60-70% of the days I am home, I will jump on my stationary bike and pedal for 40 minutes. Because riding a stationary bike can be just about as boring as watching paint dry, I have the bike in front of TV in our basement.

It was not until we moved to Illinois, that I really had the time in the morning to cycle. I guess it is the difference between a 30-40 minute commute versus the 90 minute Connecticut to Mid-Town version.

I liked to bicycle early when I was traveling and living in hotels. They would have a TV in the hotel gym but it was often on the news because that is what the other hotel guests seemed to prefer. In my own house, I had total freedom. So, what to watch?

I tried movies because they were my first and favorite choice, but I could never ever watch a full movie in 40 minutes. That was just frustrating. I then tried to watch sit-com re-runs on Nick-at-Nite, TBS, or other local channels. But, I ride 40 minutes and that was good for one sit-com and a teasing, frustrating, part of another. Plus, I hated all the commercials. The news did not hold my interest very long, unless for the days there were really big breaking stories but thankfully those are few and far between.

Finally, I settled on the History Channel. They have a great series in the morning beginning at 5 am Central Time called, The History Classroom. It runs for 45 minutes and is always very interesting. As my alarm goes off at 5, I am not on the bike until 5:10, so I miss the beginning but enjoy the whole show and always learn something new.

Of course this is a sign of getting old. Old people watch the Discovery and History Channels. I am guilty as charged. But, it is always interesting and the shows are well done using history professors and authors making statements throughout the show. The stories are actually acted out and reasonably well given the limited production budget of the show and the epic nature of much of the subject matter.

I have seen shows on Pearl Harbor, Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, Jamestown, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington to name a few. They provide pretty in-depth looks at the events and the people often dispelling misconceptions that are quite common.

On December 21st, I watched Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas. It was amazing. I had always heard of the pagan roots that Christmas celebrations actually overlay. It had to do with the winter solstice, December 21st, the shortest day and hence longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere where Christmas celebrations really developed and took hold.

There were pagan festivals of light in many cultures to counter-balance the longest night of the year. The Norse celebrated the Yule from December 21st through early January often as long as twelve days (the twelve days of… hmmm). They would burn giant logs, Yule logs, and feast and party until the log was totally burned out.

At this point of winter, they would also slaughter animals so they would not have to feed them through the winter. It was the only time of the year when these Northerners would have fresh meat thus adding to the festive nature of this time of the year. In Germany, they might even bring evergreen boughs and eventually trees into the home to both add color and portend the return of spring.

In Rome, where the weather was more temperate, the winter solstice was more of a harvest celebration called Saturnalia. Saturn was the god of agriculture. It was a hedonistic time that lasted a month where the social order was reversed and peasants were in charge. It is commonly believed that Pope Julius I (337-352), set Christmas as December 25th so as to overlay Saturnalia. No one knew the exact date of the birth of Christ. Easter was the bigger celebration in the early days of the faith.

With the middle ages, Christmas replaced the original pagan holidays but retained many of the pagan rituals. People would attend mass and then participate in Mardi Gras like bacchanalian festival. The poor would go to the homes of the rich where they would be served food and drink. If the rich did not open their doors and serve the poor well they would be pestered with mischief or worse. It sounds a lot like Saturnalia. With the coming of the puritans, England actually suppressed the celebration of Christmas because of the un-Christ like behaviors and pagan roots.

This Puritan view extended to the United States. From 1659-1681, Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone caught celebrating it was fined five schillings. The TV show even reported that for the first 20-30 years of the United States, most people worked on December 25th including Congress. Another interesting fact is that a 1928 Christmas class riot (mischief out of control?) in New York City motivated the city council to establish a police department. Most will not know and be quite surprised that Christmas was not made a federal holiday until June 26, 1870!

Christmas celebrations were transformed in the 1800s in England and the United States. These changes have influenced and shaped how the holiday is celebrated around the world. First off, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens wrote stories, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon and A Christmas Carol respectively, to show a more sophisticated and honorable way to celebrate Christmas. The focus became on charity, good will, family and specifically children.
Washington Irving even helped set the stage by proclaiming St. Nicholas and his Dutch manifestation, Sinter Klaas, the patron saint of New York in his History of New York. Santa Claus, stockings, and gifts for children became set in concrete with an Episcopal minister, Clement Clarke Moore, penning a poem for his daughters entitled An Account of a visit from St. Nicholas in 1822. The first line of this poem is “Twas the Night before Christmas.” St. Nicholas was depicted as “a right jolly old elf” and had "a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer."

The famed political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, finished the transformation of the goodly St. Nicholas of Patara circa the 300s AD to Santa Claus with his 1881 drawing. Nast also gave us the North Pole, the elves, the workshop and Mrs. Claus.

http://www.the-north-pole.com/history/images/nast3.jpg

These changes were accompanied with a simultaneous embracing of the holiday, the idea of gift giving, and Santa Claus by retail establishments. Stores started advertising Christmas specials in the 1820s. At a Philadelphia store in 1841, thousands showed up to view a life-sized model of Santa Claus. Soon live Santas were in the stores. Sometime in the 1890s, the Salvation Army dressed unemployed men as Santa Claus to solicit donations to provide Christmas meals for the needy.

The Christmas tree was introduced to England and shortly thereafter to the US by none other than Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert. He did this in 1846.

With movies and television, the popularization of the holiday and these modern icons has continued to evolve with the Miracle on 34th Street to The Grinch that Stole Christmas to A Christmas Story to Christmas with the Kranks. Every year new movies and songs come out. I can barely keep

December 27th: It was kind of a sad day. It was a big news day. I awoke to find Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day surfing in and around CNN. I realized that the former prime minister was exactly my age. The TV was great but after a couple of hours, I got tired of watching the same stock footage and listening to the talking head experts from this university or that Federal Agency. They did not seem any more expert than some of the smart folks who are reading this letter.

A happy and healthy 2008 to one and all.

November 2007: The Glory of Fall

After the October letter about Genocide, I needed something much calmer, serene, and perhaps even humorous to write about. As November progressed, I noticed something odd and intriguing. The leaves around Chicago were taking forever to turn color and fall. In most years, the leaves turn color in October and by the beginning of November, the show, as they say, is over. The leaves are all down and winter is in the air. That was not the case this year.

You might be thinking, oh no he is going to write about global warming. The case for that is quite apparent. Fall is falling later because the planet is warming. In X years, with the melting polar ice caps, land masses will be smaller, coastal cities will be under water, and the interior of the continents will all be desert. This may happen in fifty or five hundred years. I thought about writing about this but it could be just as depressing as writing about the Armenian Genocide.

Instead, I thought I would write about the glory of fall, my favorite season. I have always loved fall or autumn. It is the season of back to school. It is the harvest season, the bountiful time of harvest feasts and rituals, the time of Thanksgiving in the United States. It is the season of Halloween, a spiritual season when the heritage and vestige of Druid beliefs hang rich in the air. It is the season of the leaves on the trees turning vibrant colors and falling perfuming the air with that rich ripe fragrance.

Fall is supposed to be the season of death. Things mature, ripen, and then beginning to die. Things go dormant for six months until spring, the season of rebirth and renewal. Yet, I never have really felt that way. First of all, with it being the back to school season, fall was always like the start of a new year. It was a time of excitement and renewal. It was a time of beginnings and I was always enthused about it. Plus, because of the colors and bounty, I never felt the sense of the year dying until the trees were barren and the ground began to freeze. Only then did it kind of sink in.

The reverence for the fall began back in elementary school. It was at Robert Burns School in Miss Fletcher’s science class. She gave us the assignment of collect various leaves, putting them into a notebook or scrapbook, noting the name of the tree, and perhaps some elementary classification of the leaves. It was a long term assignment. She gave us a few weeks. I recall being third, fourth grade, or maybe even fifth grade.

I really got into this assignment. I was fascinated with it. I had never really looked at trees or their leaves with such scrutiny. It was like a whole new world had opened up. I collected as many as I could. I used cellophane tape and staples to hold them onto loose leaf paper. I did not use construction paper and neither invisible tape nor glue sticks were invented yet. I wrote in pencil and crayon (Sharpies were not even a glint in my eye back then) on each page describing the type of tree and facts about the leaves. Were the leaves serrated, lobed, concave? I simply made a cover page with another loose leaf sheet and then put the whole thing in an old binder. I thought about stapling the sheets but the leaves made the book to thick and awkward for that.

I believe I had leaves from seventeen or eighteen trees. They included Sugar Maple, Hard Maple, Oak, Elm, Magnolia, Sycamore, Beech, Box Elder, a variety of fruit trees, and others I cannot remember. Given we were living in Detroit; it was impressive to collect so many different specimens in our neighborhood. The prize specimen in my collection was the leaves of a Ginkgo tree. My friends Glenn Baugh and Mary Simmons told me of this tree indigenous to Japan that was on the grounds of Cooley High School right near their homes. I followed them home from school and collected my Ginkgo leaves. It was pretty cool.

I was proud of my work. It was not the prettiest presentation but it was a most thorough effort. Others turned in works of art. Clearly, their parents helped them though that was not apparent to me back then. I just thought they were both smarter and neater. My work was my own and I got an A. I was very proud

I was so proud, that I decided this was a work worthy of keeping. So, I put it on the small bookcase in my room. The following year, I thought I would look at again and perhaps even add to it. I was shocked when I looked upon my pride and joy. The leaves which were colorful when first mounted had all turned brown. Not only had they turned brown, they became so brittle that the mere turning of the page had them crumbling and making a mess. I realized simultaneously that cellophane tape and staples were not the best way to mount leaves either. Oh well, the binder is long gone, but the memory is preserved in this letter. Because of that project, I have had a fondness for the season and the falling leaves ever since.

Back then folks used to burn their leaves in the street by the curb in front of their houses. The fall air was fragranced with the smoke of burning leaves. It was quite pleasant and something seasonal people looked forward to and actually liked. Somehow by the late 1960s, probably because of more and more mature trees, the number of leaves grew so much that the burning of leaves became a health hazard. The air, literally, became thick with smoke that burned our eyes and irritated our throats. The practice of burning leaves was soon outlawed.

All the seasons are the same length, officially, on the calendar. But in my youth, in Michigan, it seemed that summer and winter were very long. Spring was just April and May. Fall seemed like it was only the month of October. September was still summer and November definitely seemed like winter.

There was the phenomenon of Indian Summer. Indian Summer is a late fall, unseasonably, warm spell after at least one killing frost and a period of cool or cold weather. I remember a one Indian Summer day quite clearly. I cannot remember the year or whether we were in elementary school or junior high. But I remember the day. It was Veterans’ Day.

Back then Veterans’ Day was not celebrated on Mondays, it was observed on November 11th. It was originally Armistice Day when Germany surrendered and ended WWI in 1918. Congress made it Veterans’ Day in 1954. It was, from a kid’s perspective a minor national holiday because the Detroit Public Schools only gave us a half day off. It was like a waste, we were not in school long enough to do anything especially since all the students were looking forward to ending the day early. It was equally lame because for all the build-up, it was only a half day off and that went faster and with less fanfare then we all expected. Except this one year…

The leaves were already off the trees. The landscape was barren and brown. It had been cold, winter coat cold. When school let out at 11:30 or noon, we were surprised by just how sunny, hazy and warm it was. It was shirtsleeve weather. One of the guys suggested we meet at Cooley High School, and play some football. Sure, why not.

We went home, had lunch, and biked over to the high school. All the athletic fields were empty; we had the run of the place. So, we decided to play on the main field, the high school stadium. It was great. We laid our jackets and sweatshirts in a pile on the sidelines and eight, or so, of us lived gridiron dreams in a mostly touch game. I remember it being mostly Boy Scout buddies. Amazingly, it was only that one day of Indian Summer. The next day it was freezing cold again. It was the best Veterans’ Day during my years in the Detroit Public Schools.

Certainly, football became more and more part of the fall, mostly as a spectator. As I got older, the best fall Saturdays involved being in Ann Arbor and going to football games in Michigan Stadium. This November 17th we drove from Chicago to Ann Arbor on for the Michigan – Ohio State game. On the way, I could not help but notice the numbers of trees with most of their leaves still on them. For this part of the country, it was quite indicative of the late fall we were experiencing.

While living in Michigan, I thought Michigan had everything a lover of fall could want. With four seasons, there was usually a glorious and colorful fall. As a Boy Scout, I enjoyed the fall campouts. It was a great time to be in the woods. The sunlight seemed more golden amid the red, yellow, orange leaves. Usually the weather was great and there were certainly less bugs than in the spring and summer.

In June of 1990, we moved to Wilton, CT. Wilton was first settled in 1651 by the non-indigenous as an extension of Norwalk. It was incorporated as a separate town in 1802. It was a rural farming town until the mid-1990s. Since then, it has basically become a bedroom community of 17,000. It is both a Connecticut town and a suburb in the New York metroplex.

The landscape is undulating. At one point way back when, it was covered with glaciers. As the glaciers, receded they left a behind an undulating rocky terrain that basically went down hill all the way to Long Island Sound.

Until the late 1950s, Wilton was mostly farm land. I read that back then, from where we lived atop Cavalry Hill in the southeast corner of the town, one could see Long Island sound which was about seven miles away. Today, that would be impossible. When it was farmland, there were no trees; the land had all been cleared. There has been fifty some years of re-forestation. In the summers, I could not even see my neighbors’ houses for the dense vegetation.

As a result, the falls in Wilton, in Connecticut in general, are spectacular. The plentiful trees give plenty of color. This undulating countryside provides panoramic vistas. Add to all of this the charm of New England wood frame homes and the stone walls that part of Connecticut is known for, it makes for lovely views breathtaking views..

October 1990 was our first fall in Connecticut. I remember driving around Wilton on a beautiful sunny fall day. I literally thought about pinching myself, it was that picturesque. It was raining leaves, the air was crisp, the sky pure blue, and the sun illuminated all with that golden color reserved only for the fall.

When I say raining leaves, it literally did that. I recall another time in the late 1990s. It was raining leaves. I stood outside our home for a long time in amazement. There were thousands of leaves in the air about me at any given instant. It just didn’t stop.

Another memorable fall in Connecticut was in 1999. That summer we experienced both a severe drought and extremely hot temperatures. As a result, the leaves started changing colors and falling right after Labor Day. By the middle of October, the show was over, the trees were barren. The fall of 1999 was as early as the fall this year is late.

There is a phrase, “looking at the world through rose colored, glasses.” We have all heard it. It is used to suggest that one always sees things better than they really are.

I do not think I look at the world this way. The glasses I prefer are actually orange in color. After a bike crash in which the metal rimmed sunglasses I was wearing caused two lacerations requiring stitches, I decided to by sport glasses with plastic rims and lenses to minimize this kind of injury should I ever take another spill. I settled on Smith Sliders, made in France, with interchangeable lenses for different lighting conditions. The pair I bought had brown, orange, yellow, and clear lenses. I could see where the brown and the clear would come in handy. I was not sure about the yellow and orange. The salesman told me, “try the orange lenses. If you do, you will probably use them all the time.”

I did not believe him. But, I was curious. After trying them a few times, the salesman was absolutely correct. These are the lenses I use like 90% of the time. They make everything brighter and clearer. Even on sunny days they do the job. They also make everything more colorful and vibrant. There is more texture and contrast to everything you see. The world simply looks duller without them. This is why, I am certain, serious marksmen and skeet shooter don yellow or orange glasses. They brighten up and add contrast to what they are aiming at. So, in the height of fall, riding in either the Connecticut or, now, Illinois the colors of the season are even more beautiful.

As I finish this letter, all the leaves are down around here in Chicagoland and the weather has been wintry for the past week. The weather report is even for a few inches of snow this weekend. The leaves are down, it is cold, and snow is forecasted. While it is not official until December 21st, it is now winter in my book.