Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 11, 2024 – Each day brought memorable encounters with the people of Buffalo. Going door-to-door, you meet all kinds of people—happy, sad, smart, dumb, kind, mean, guileful, guileless, short-tempered, tall-tale-tellers, people mad at the world and folks at whom the world is mad—and once you’re invited to cross the threshold, you see all kinds …
JANUARY 10, 2024 – During my sheltered life leading up to the sales job, I’d had little interaction with Black America. What encounters I did have with Blacks were either superficial or not at all instructive. At the superficial end, when I was in kindergarten our family took a road trip to Florida via the …
JANUARY 9, 2024 – My running and skiing marathon phase was still a few years ahead of me, but by 1974 I’d run and skied my share of long distances. The salient features of these sports is that even when you’re on a team, you’re always on your own. You sink or swim alone. The …
JANUARY 8, 2024 – No element of the Southwestern sales formula was a mere suggestion. The daily start time, the evening finish time, the daily door-knocking quota, the get-yourself-across-the-threshold quota, the give-your-pitch quota, the closing quota, the closing procedure, the weeks-end letter to your booster back home, and the weeks-end report you turned into your …
JANUARY 7, 2023 – When I first heard the Southwestern method of finding summer living quarters, I was dubious. As the hours grew on that cold rainy miserable Saturday in Buffalo, I decided the approach to finding housing was nothing short of hare-brained. Yet in the end, it proved to be effective. And who was …
JANUARY 6, 2024 – Late Friday of training week, the sales managers gathered their minions to inform us of our assigned territories. Curious about the Deep South I was secretly hoping—despite full knowledge that the summer climate would be unbearable—that we’d get assigned to some Godforsaken part of Alabama. Since I’d taken a swan dive …
JANUARY 5, 2024 – The week of sales training was about 25% actual sales training and 75% attitude adjustment. The sales part was intense, well-organized, and highly disciplined. It had to be, since the only way Southwestern sold product was by a bunch of callow college students pounding the pavement—and pounding doors along the way. …
JANUARY 4, 2024 – After final exams at the end of spring semester, I parked myself for a week at my sister’s house in Jamaica Plain, just outside of Boston. It would be my last stretch of freedom, I assumed, until summer’s end. If everything worked out as planned, after the sales job I’d return …
JANUARY 3, 2024 – Soon I received the congratulatory word that I was officially a member of Keith Ronck’s Southwestern sales team for the summer of ’74. My friend Mike would serve as my mentor, and in both capacities he called me to gush with enthusiast support. “Act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic,” he said, leading …
JANUARY 2, 2024 – In the wake of Mike’s visit I mulled over the whole concept of knocking on doors, selling a one-volume encyclopedia with the heft of the huge Webster’s dictionary on the stand in the reference area of the library. It was too big for Mike to have lugged all the way to …
JANUARY 1, 2024 – The day before I was to undergo a stem cell transplant in treatment of multiple myeloma, he and his wife Sally visited us on our back porch. Don had just been diagnosed with liver cancer, metastasized from duodenal cancer, it later turned out, and was slated to begin his own treatment …
DECEMBER 31, 2023 – (Cont.) One and a half years as an undergraduate business major hadn’t changed Mike one iota—except he was no longer wearing his Interlochen uniform. He was still very much “in your face,” and when I introduced him to a few of my college friends, I could tell that they didn’t quite …
DECEMBER 30, 2023 – In high school I had a friend named Mike. By general consensus, Mike was a pain in the neck but an endearing one, if that dichotomy can be imagined. His high energy could be mistaken for impulsivity, and he was of strong opinions, intensely conveyed. He took special pleasure in watching …
Blogger’s Note: A new mini-memoir series! DECEMBER 29, 2023 – In searching for a new blog series topic, I dusted the cobwebs off my past to see what material might spring forth from cartons in the attic of my memory. Miraculously, some rich stuff surfaced from a tired old cardboard box labeled (figuratively), “SUMMER JOBS …
DECEMBER 28, 2023 – In watching Maestro (Netflix) I was struck by the central question it raises about the “first internationally acclaimed American-born, American-trained conductor,” the irrepressible Leonard Bernstein: How in the world would you begin to make a film about such a larger-than-life conductor, composer, performer, entertainer, teacher, mentor, world ambassador, humanitarian, political activist, …
DECEMBER 27, 2023 – This day last year marked my 31st day of skiing in a record season of 128 ski days. I know these numbers because they’re recorded in tally form on our basement wall. This year’s total ski days to date: ZERO, thanks to the cold and snow of winter having so far …
DECEMBER 26, 2023 – In the context of a musical performance, my dad used to say that greatness lay in the details—not any single detail, he noted, but in the aggregate effect of all the details. “Therefore,” he said, “as a performer you have to get all the details right.” Dad’s musical refinement came as …
DECEMBER 25, 2023 – After Santa’s visit last night and in the calm before the Christmas celebration storm today, I heard an interview with a serious journalist, Garrett M. Graff, author of UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government’s Search for Alien Life Here—And Out There. I’m not particularly interested in the science (or …
DECEMBER 24, 2023 – (Cont.) As my Grandpa Nilsson used to say on this day (out of earshot of other adults, except Dad), “’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring . . . not even a mouse turd.” Then he’d laugh at his own joke, and as …
DECEMBER 23, 2023 – During the course of my 24-hour stay at the Red Cabin, a dense fog filled the surrounding woods. When I hiked along the lakeshore path, I seemed to be walking along the border of infinity: beyond about 50 feet from shore, the lake itself was completely missing from view. Back in …
DECEMBER 22, 2023 – Today I drove through mist, fog, and rain to our “Red Cabin” on the shores of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin. Usually the lake surface freezes by Thanksgiving, and by Christmas the ice will safely support any number of recreational activities, from skating, skiing and ice-fishing to cross-lake snowmobiling. Trees of …
DECEMBER 21, 2023 – Early this morning I’d wanted to address (here) the recent decision of the Colorado State Supreme Court on the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the Duly Defeated from standing for election as president. To offer my two cents’ worth in any viable currency, however, I decided I’d need to …
DECEMBER 20, 2023 – At the front end of the day I read a report about how Houthi rebel attacks on commercial oil tankers in the Red Sea could disrupt global oil markets. The result of course, would be higher prices for a key commodity (still), thus giving the Fed little breathing space on the …
DECEMBER 19, 2023 – Today I pursued a mundane task consuming unexpectedly over two hours of time and energy that could have been deployed to far more productive endeavors. Call it a misallocation of scarce resources. My unplanned diversion, however, was not without profit. Beyond the immediate benefit of providing material for today’s post[1] was a …
DECEMBER 18, 2023 – I know we live in a neighborhood of very decent people. Or more precisely, “I know we live in a neighborhood of very ‘Minnesota nice’ people”? Either way, the evidence is how local folks react to a particular “yard display” of . . . uh, Christmas decorations. If in the evening …