In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens wrote that “Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.” How right he was. Consider that it’s March Madness, and while my team Maryland made it to the “Sweet 16,” they had to face Number 1 Florida to advance. They didn’t.
My first “real” job was at a company that stood just a block away from where SCOA’s Washington office sits today. During, and following, my senior year in college, I landed a role as a public relations assistant at a sports marketing outfit. ProServ was the name of the firm founded by former Davis Cup captain Donald Dell to represent tennis stars such as Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, and Stan Smith.
Last year, during the Christmas holiday, I purchased each member of my immediate family one of those Page-a-Day Calendars that I thought matched their personality. Among others, I bought calendars on Zen, Dad Jokes, Sports Trivia, Cats, and Crossword Puzzles. If I would have bought one that included a Word-of-the-Day, there is no doubt that “tariff” would have popped up this week.
Earlier this week, sitting in an introductory pitch meeting with one of Washington’s leading public policy consulting firms, discussing the first 45 days of the second Trump administration, one word jumped out at me. I actually circled it in my notepad…”schizophrenic.” Whoa…
This week, I attended the Conference Board’s Government Relations Executives (GRE) Council meeting in Orlando, FL. I’ve sat on the Council since its inception in 2017, and the corporate member roster reads like a who’s who of global business—BASF, John Deere, Diageo, Fidelity, Lowe’s, Mattel, Sysco, Target, Walmart, Warner Music, and others
More than thirty years ago, my wife and I spent our honeymoon in Hawaii. Because Hurricane Iniki had struck the island of Kauai just a few months earlier, we visited Maui and the big island of Hawaii.
Whether novice or connoisseur, a trip to California’s wine country can be overwhelming for any oenophile. My wife prefers Napa Valley with its 16 American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) and the ease of accessing its 475 wineries—north on Rt. 29 in the morning and back south on the Silverado Trail in the afternoon.
When facing a novel issue, entering a new environment, or trying to understand a complex concept one may go through a process of metacognitive situational awareness. Metacognition is the ability to realize how one is perceiving and understanding the environment around them, and it involves being consciously aware of one’s own thoughts and mental processes.
In 1961, Robert Frost became the first poet to speak at the inauguration of a president. He recited from memory “The Gift Outright,” when the glare of the sun prevented him from reading “Dedication,” a poem he had written specifically for John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
Unlike some of my friends who regularly drive to Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts, my wife and I are not big drivers. I know for a fact the furthest we have ever driven together was a pre-marriage trip to Charleston, South Carolina, a bit more than seven hours away.