Cosmic Dust

I was born to Ray William and Doris Roberta at 2:52 pm on Wednesday, September 16, 1942.  I’m certain that on the 1st day of my life it didn’t occur to either of them that a lifelong dream of their first born son would have to wait for a new century, and 29,777 days.    […]

By now all meaningful remnants of Christmas past have been removed from much of our collective memory.  Drugs and illegal migrants are pouring across our southern border and we are at war almost everywhere, supporting more than 45 armed conflicts which  includes a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Israel is […]

I had a conversation with a young Gen Z recently. This is a peer group that appears to be descending into an increasingly tribal and cultural malaise centered about gender, race and a selfish definition of equity which only recent generations seem to understand. Here is my reply. August 2023 You are at the moment […]

The light had turned green.  Kathy and I were standing at a busy Paris intersection when the lady in front of us started to step into the street. Kathy reached out and touched her arm just as a fast moving car passed in front of us. “Close call”, or Devine intervention? It’s your call – […]

While president of our University chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America we wanted to send a member from our chapter to the International Conference that was scheduled that year in Tel Aviv, but we didn’t have any money, and we were running out of time. I decided to appeal our case at […]

I spent the last year of high school working in my uncle’s family shoe store in a small California valley community.     My Uncle Jack had two employees.  While both were named Bill, any similarity ended there. The older Bill, I’ll refer to him as Bill senior, was a man in his fifties and […]

I had gone into a local Starbucks one morning just before Christmas for a latte, and a welcome opportunity to work away from the office.  This location is like most, with a comfortable seating arrangement including community tables that can accommodate up to eight people.  I took a seat at the end of one of […]

Niccolo Machiavelli is a name that emotes powerful responses, even from those who have never read a word of his writings. The expression “Machiavellian” has become a pejorative term associated with the dark and suspicious side of human nature.  However, serious students of Machiavelli acknowledge that he was, in fact, a dedicated republician committed to […]

GENESIS  May 2012 American business, and particularly marketing and public relations practitioners, continue to encourage corporate agents to view the customer through the prism of matrix models calculated to identify the prospect as numerical “objects” that are leveraged, quantified and then reduced to percentages that are plugged into a measurement equation.  Today’s media and marketing […]

American business, and particularly marketing and public relations practitioners, continue to encourage corporate agents to view the customer through the prism of matrix models calculated to identify the prospect as numerical “objects” that are leveraged, quantified and then reduced to percentages that are plugged into a measurement equation or algorythm.  Today’s media and marketing executives […]

“I had already accepted failure, so during a Christmas party at the school of my oldest daughter I wasn’t in a festive mood.  After leaving a very successful sales career with a national company for personal reasons, I began a career in the real estate industry.  However, after less than two years it was clear that […]

The dictionary defines vendor as “someone who sells;  The French infinitive is “vendre”, and used in a much broader context as sell, sale; market, vend, trade; barter away.  In my experience I have found the vending machine to be the ultimate in the “sales mechanics”of human nature. Have you ever watched a vending machine at […]

This is part of an email sent to me from a close friend. It is followed by parts of my reply. He is a great guy, dedicated to his family and friends.  However, he was beginning to question his faith, as well as his place in the world relative to his observation of others.    […]

There is plenty of advice for organizing a successful public speaking event. But here are 15 rules for public speaking disaster. By: An American Flaneur – A Stream of Consciousness There are countless ways to screw-up a speaking engagement. But, I have 15 rules for public speaking disaster that are quite memorable – starting with […]