cornerstone.....................

 

     The cornerstone of the company's culture was a philosophy Danny called Enlightened Hospitality, which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else, including the guests and investors.  This didn't mean the customer suffered; in fact, the opposite.  Danny's big idea was to hire great people, treat them well, and invest deeply into their personal and professional growth, and they would take great care of the customers—which is exactly what they did.

-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

A visual treat...................................

 My Sweetie and I took a field trip to Wilson's Garden Center this morning.  Always a treat!

endless wonderment...............

 For the real amazement, if you wish to be amazed, is this process. You start out as a single cell derived from the coupling of a sperm and an egg; this divides in two, then four, then eight, and so on, and at a certain stage there emerges a single cell which has as all its progeny the human brain. The mere existence of such a cell should be one of the great astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.

-Lewis Thomas, Medusa and The Snail

Hmmm...........................

via

Betting against Bezos............................................

...............................................Not sure why you would do that.

It's a process...............................

Traffic...................................................John Barleycorn Must Die



There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They've plowed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead

They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John's grown a long long beard and so become a man
They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the way, serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart

They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came onto a pond
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones

And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn

On radical generosity...............

...........................................................This is a very cool story.

“Basically,” he says. “I throw pebbles into still pools.”

via

Rooting for the skeptics...........

.......................................as our planet grows greener.

Even a pig can fly................................

As he later put it, he learned that "doing the right thing is more important than doing things right."  When a company is riding a growing trend, management is under less pressure to do everything perfectly.  (Another saying of his from those years is, "Even a pig can fly if it finds itself in the eye of the storm.")


-Clay Shirky,  as excerpted from Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream.  The he quoted in this passage is Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi

Adam Smith............................

..............................................................would be so proud.

via

True, that.............................

It’s hard to be too angry at consumers. To be sure, they probably should have known that you couldn’t really buy organic, locally sourced food year-round at just a smidge more than you’d pay for a regular meal. After all, the average American spent half their income on food in 1900, while the modern American now spends a paltry 12 percent, even including a lavish helping of restaurant meals. That should give us some sign that local, artisanal food is not going to be cheap. But most Americans are not economic historians.

-Megan McArdle, as excerpted from her post "Dining Out on Empty Virtue"

Real wealth...............................

Contrary to popular belief, food does not come from stores.  It comes from a process contingent upon "healthy topsoil, adequate water (preferably rainwater), sunlight, salubrious seasons and ... human intelligence."  We would do well not to forget that. 

Nature’s stock isn’t gold or any other symbol but, instead, available goods beginning and ending in what feeds us. There are other goods, certainly, but none as important as food (after which I would name, without ranking them, clothing, shelter, and fuel). If you aren’t being fed you’re not going to be distracted into an intellectual stupor by an electronic device, much less become a coal baron or a railroad tycoon and then, if luxury affords it, a philanthropist. You’re going to be a corpse with only the worms and grass and trees to thank you for your generosity. The fellowship of dust cares nothing about “texting” or donor intent.

-As excerpted from this post at the Front Door Republic

This is a good sign...........................................

Us pesky humans...........................

Walter Russell Mead's blog notes how remarkable people are.  Full post is here.  Excerpt here:

Malthusianism is one of the most persistent delusions out there. It fails to grasp that people don’t just add cost—they add creativity and ingenuity. Population Bomb adherents think of people as bacteria on a petri dish that only eat their food supply, reproduce, and die. But people don’t just consume; they create. That creativity can never be predicted or measured in advance, which is why many projections into the future look like Malthusian doom scenarios. But thanks to adaptability and creativity, the human race always finds another way to thrive.

Not sure if I'm ready for this..........

Purple tomatoes are the food of the future..........................?

On parenting............................

Confronting life itsownself at Sippican Cottage:

"Every man wants his son to be a better man than himself, but how are you going to produce that which you can't manage for yourself?"