Close Call

Well, I hadn't really told any of you about this. As a woodworker, I'm a little embarrassed. Back on May 10, I had a close call in the shop. It resulted in nine stitches in a finger, but it could have been a lot worse. Which is why I am calling it a "close call." I do have a finger that looks slightly different than it did before anything happened, but it is still in place and it still functions the way it is suppose to. With a nod to my Industrial Arts teachers, Russ and Bill, I will also tell you I wasn't doing anything identifiable as "WRONG." it was just one of those weird things that happens.

The idea of a "close call" seems to have a really different meaning at the moment, one we have all gotten somewhat used to and one I believe we will get more used to. I'm talking about those who are all around this disease we are all contending with. I've had about three of these so far. This is when someone you know and have been around either comes down with the disease, or is close enough to someone else that they need to be tested. With the move from summer to winter months, I fear these encounters won't decrease in number.

So, what do we do about this? I'll tell you what my behavior is going to be. In the time I have been in distribution/logistics, each time we had a close call, we took the time to look at the situation and decide what could have been done differently. Trust me, I've certainly done that with the situation in my shop. I stopped, and thought about what I could have done differently and what I can do going forward to make sure it doesn't happen again. I just don't like the pain and recovery period associated with any type of injury.

When we think about the corona virus, we have to take it very seriously. Not only is it taking lives, but in talking to friends, family, and co-workers who dealt with the disease personally, there seems to be the possibilities of true lasting consequences. This is really something to be avoided, so take the precautions you see necessary and I would encourage you to analyze any close calls you have, to make sure you can avoid the situation the next time. Hurt fingers heal and get better over time; sometimes lung function does not.

Enough of that. One other thing I wanted to talk about today is logistics around the holidays. I am sure most of you have seen this, but the major freight carriers are predicting an inability to stay caught up with packages over the next two months. The suggestion... ship early! This is one of those things I say to you today, but I'm really saying it out loud so I remind myself. Many of you know, particularly if you are family or a friend, I am horrible at planning ahead. Many times I have finished Christmas shopping on the 23rd or 24th of December. That looks like a bad plan this year, so I will need to plan differently.

I think I had let you know I found someone to take my sister's teardrop trailer to her. While this is true, we are struggling a little bit to get it done. Derek, who agreed to do the hauling, was first hit with a truck going down, then he was hit with COVID in his warehouse and had to shut down for a time. I hope we will see forward movement soon as I would like to get the trailer to my sister. I also have a couple of projects I've committed to this winter and need the space. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Finally, I would like to say think you to those who have found my Etsy store and placed orders. It is nice to know some of the things I make will be in your lives. If there is something you need and you believe it is in my skill set, do not hesitate to reach out. There may well be a possibility there.

Please continue to be careful and safe. I want everyone to be okay when we finally round the corner and find a way to deal with this terrible disease.

Resilience

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how brittle people are right now. I still believe this, but I also think it is important to talk about the flip side as often as we can. To me, the reverse of brittle is resilience. And resilience is what we need in the toughest of times. I may have told the story before, but it bears repeating. 

In the last days at Payless Cashways, we had a tendency to close ranks and work to take care of each other. We knew where we were going, we just didn't know how we were going to get there. In that environment, we were all pretty open about feelings and personal history. One friend talked about a period in his life when he and his family had to live in the haymow on a family farm. It would be very easy to think about how horrible living in a hay mow for any period of time could be. On the contrary, my friend told me how great the experience was. The family had each other, had a place to live and a whole big farm to play on. Sometimes it is just about looking at things the right way.

When I was working to finish college, one summer I had nothing, including a place to live. I ended up living in what would now be called a walk-in closet. There was enough room for a mattress and some space for personal items on the floor. Of course, there was plenty of room to hang things :). I went into the summer thinking I could survive anything, and this was just the next step in the journey. I came out of the summer having had the best time ever. The rest of the people living in the house weren't really people I knew well in the beginning, but we grew to know and appreciate each other. When I moved back to a more traditional living environment, I missed the craziness we had all enjoyed during the summer.

I know I repeat myself, but much of what we are going through right now is best handled with a good positive attitude. If you think about dealing with 2020 and all it has brought, those handling it the best know it will be a good story in a decade or so. Think about the number of stories that will begin with, Remember 2020? This will be our equivalent of those stories we heard when we were kids. You know the ones. About how our grandparents walking four miles to school, through deep snow, uphill both ways. Stories get bigger over time, and although it is hard to imagine, the stories about this year will get bigger as well. Okay, that is all I have to say about 2020 right now.

And now we wait. The teardrop trailer is complete, the transporter has been contacted and accepted the contract to haul it. The little final things are finished, and now we wait. 

I find the experience of completing a large, long-term project to be an interesting one. One I haven't necessarily experienced too often. The feeling that occurs when you are done with something which has taken time and work to complete. As I sit and think about it, it seems a little like finishing a college degree. There is the huge relief of a thing done, and hopefully done well, and at the same time you wonder what will change and how things will be different. Having this project going on in the shop over the last four years has always given me something to think about and something to talk to others about. I actually bought the trailer kit at the beginning of September 2016. This has actually been the length of an average undergraduate degree.

Where to next? When I started on the trailer I actually thought the next thing I would do in the Toybox was to rebuild a small tractor. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I  lost the desire to do mechanical work. I missed the window to learn it from someone I grew up around. I can watch enough on YouTube.

It has been interesting how the world has continued to fill up with woodworking projects for me to complete. There have been several library projects at this point, as well as work for people I know in the community. I have a project scheduled for this winter that will keep me busy for a while, and although I have joked about it, the time has come to get serious about finishing the kitchen cabinets for the house. That project has been on the back burner long enough. Time to get busy on it.

If you have any needs the Toybox might be able to help with, reach out and let me know. Have a great weekend.

Value

Last week, I had a couple of different discussions about the stuff we surround ourselves with to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. Colored by what 2020 has been and continues to be, the conversations really made me think. One person is finishing a house right now and asked if I had advice for preparing for the move. Now, this made me think back. My family and I have made five major moves over the years. This may not really seem big, except we did all of them in a span of less than ten years. We got really good at moving. Anyway, when asked about moving, I said without question the most important thing to do is to sort and get rid of the items you won't need. Don't move items you really won't need. If you move it, that item will stay in your house for time, possibly years, to come. Now, with this simple advice comes some really big caveats.

First, if working with someone else to determine what should and should not be re-purposed, you will find "value" is incredibly subjective. Some items you couldn't even imagine being without are items the other person would throw in a garbage bag and carry to the curb. The same is true the other direction. I can tend to be somewhat overbearing in decision-making situations, and this tends to be one of those (for those of you who've known me for years, quit laughing, it's not funny). There is the potential for hurt feelings and loud voices or screams. I remember working through items in my mother's house with my sister. Before we were done, we were both in tears.

Second, what is the current perspective around things. For those of you who have not watched, the lines at thrift stores and Goodwill have been huge over the past months. With everyone at home more than usual, the current perspective is that now is a good time to eliminate useless items. Other things affecting current perspective are people's age and how they are playing for the long term. I don't want to make my children sort through any more than absolutely necessary when I am no longer here, so I try to deal with it now. The exception, of course, is the shop. Everything there is important and will all be wanted by someone down the line. I guess one or both of my children will have incredibly well set up shops at some time.

The third thing driving the valuation of items is how long you've had them. If something has been in your family/possession for fifty years, it has a greater value than something added to the house today. I know we could have gotten rid of much of the kids take-home work from school if we had done it then. But, load it in totes and move it five times over almost thirty years and it is much harder to get rid of something. We are there on some of the artwork the kids did when they were young. The most interesting thing for me was I remember running into those boxes of schoolwork of mine when we were taking care of mom's house. I hope there was not a gold brick hiding in one of the boxes as I opened them, looked to see what was in the box, and got rid of the whole box.

So, in the midst of all of this thought about things and what is the value, I have found a way to move our piano to someone where it will truly be valued. We bought this piano when we were in Kearney, MO from a traveling piano salesman, a story in and of itself and it worked wonderfully for the kids to take lessons and learn to play. I doubt it has been played in the last ten years. Anyway, the place I did the last library installation has been trying to figure out where to get a piano, and we were more than happy to offer it up. I love it when you can take an item which is not of great value to you anymore and move it to a place, or to people, that will love having it. This is the case here. Yeah, it just makes me smile.

Speaking of things being relocated, the time has finally come for the teardrop to make its way to Maine. This month, I have a transporter  picking it up to deliver it to Jaye and Karen. I am so excited and I hope they just love it. It has been a joy to build, and it will be nice to regain about a quarter of my Toybox. Of course I already have plans for the space. I am also looking for the next big project, so if you have something in mind, it may not be a bad time to reach out to me. I hope you are all having successful weeks, mine has been very good, and I hope the weekend also goes well for you.

Metallurgy

 
We learn many strange little things in a lifetime. One thing I learned when I was in the bolt business was about the manner a piece of steel could be made brittle through repeated bending, or flexing. The easiest example of this is to take a coat hanger and bend it back an forth. The first thing the wire will do is get hot. Then at some point, the wire will break. What has happened is that through the bending, the steel has actually gotten harder, to the point it will no longer bend, at which point it breaks.  This is called work hardening, or strain hardening. Sometimes it is called embrittlement. Many of us have taken advantage of this to break off a piece of wire .

When my grandmother worked at the County Engineer's office, she used to tell me about an extreme example of this effect. It is called metal crystallization and happens when a piece of steel is stressed thousands of times over a long period of time. The molecules in the steel actually line up and if you have a piece of crystallized steel fail, inside it will look more line a rock than it does steel. Grandma used to tell us that almost all of the old "pony truss" bridges in the state were like this and if you took a sledge hammer and hit the rivet in the corner of the bridge where all of the parts came together, it was possible the bridge would fail.

Be clear, I am in no way suggesting attempting such an act.

So, what does this have to do with the world we are living in? I think for many of us, we have been repeatedly stressed by the world we are in. Whether it be COVID-19, or getting our children educated, figuring out work, personal health, and probably fifteen other things I am not thinking of, the world has been bending us back and forth, repeatedly. Based on everything going on, we have been work hardened. And for some of us, we are approaching the point where we could actually break. Some already have broken.

In talking with a group of my colleagues last week, there was discussion around "decision fatigue." I was amazed to find  a definition for this around COVID-19. From Medicalexpress.com,  "The concept of exhaustion and stress after making choices is known as decision fatigue. After months of assessing the risk and benefit of daily choices during the corona-virus crisis, people are tired." I was surprised to find a definition, but it seems pretty accurate. For those I work with, everyone is tired of all of the non-normal decisions needed in 2020. As we all know, there has been little normal about this year.

I also took a little time last week to ask questions of friends who operate call centers. I wanted to know about the length of calls they are experiencing this year. Interestingly enough, both friends say their average call time is up this year over last. I would suspect there are a hundred different ways to explain this, but I am going with the explanation that people need more interpersonal interaction this year as what they normally experience is gone, to some degree or another. Who would have ever thought people would replace the conversations they have with others at work or in the grocery store, with time on a call with a telemarketer. 

What do you think we should do with all of this? It seems to me it is time to take a little better care of ourselves. This could take many different forms. Maybe for some of you it is a long bath. Maybe it is going for a long walk, or a bike ride, or talking to your family members over the phone, Skype, or Face-time. Maybe it is disconnecting from all of the information feeds of the day. Whatever it is, we need to find a way to take one or two of the "bends" life has given us out of our worlds. It is time to make sure we are not stressed and flexed so much we become strain hardened.

In situations like this, I  head toward food. It is the great equalizer of the world for me. I am generally a "meat and potatoes" Iowa boy, but with today's topic it really seems like there is one go-to item.  Yup, you got it. Peanut brittle. Maybe peanut brittle could be the item that helps set some of this aside. Below is a recipe from Sara's side of the family. I know it is typically a Christmas treat, but maybe September needs a little this year.

Thank you all for following my musings. I hope I continue to bring a smile, or something to think about.  Have an awesome weekend.

An Extra Step

I'm not sure how everyone else feels, but I find myself exhausted. Given everything going on with 2020, there are plenty of reasons for this and you probably have one you are partial to. I've thought a lot about this. Everything takes at least one or more extra steps this year. I believe this is related to the pandemic.

Take something as relatively simple as going to the grocery store. In times past (last year) if you needed something you swung in when you were in the area, picked it up and came home. Pretty simple.

Not anymore.

Other things we consider these days: 

• Do I really need this?
• Should I do this as an online order or go in person?
• Will they have the product in stock?
• When should I go to have the least contact with others?
• Will other patrons be wearing masks?
• Where can I shop that they really care about my safety?

These are the thoughts just about shopping for groceries.

Admittedly, some of these were in the back of our minds historically, but have really come to the forefront. Now think about going out to dinner. We probably averaged a couple of times a week prior to March 2020. It was often a last minute decision when nobody wanted to cook. Sometimes we chose to go to to a "drive-through" and bring food home, which we still do, but often we chose to eat at a restaurant. Since March, that option has been a "hard no". The places we frequented for years in the Des Moines area haven't seen us for seven or eight months. And, as I said at the beginning of this, it has added extra steps to everything around this.

With all of this there are trade-offs, just like what happens with almost everything in life. 

Let's take cooking. I'm not sure about you, but when the pandemic started, I thought of myself two ways where cooking was concerned. First, I thought I was okay at it. I could find my way around the kitchen and it had been a few years since I absolutely destroyed anything while cooking. The second thing I thought about my ability to cook regarded what I was willing to try. I had a certain number of things I would cook and could accomplish regularly. That was the sum total of my cooking repertoire. 

Enter 2020 and the pandemic. I would have gotten WAY sick of the things I regularly cooked. You can only have breakfast for dinner so many times. But 2020 forced us to do things differently. We cook more at home, or eat peanut butter sandwiches. One thing I am truly thankful for in all of this is the companies who came to market with recipes and meal ingredients shipped directly to our homes - companies like Home Chef and Blue Apron. We just celebrated four years with Home Chef on August 28th. We skipped a few weeks, but in round numbers, they've shipped over twelve hundred dinner servings into our home. This explains why every time I go to look for a box to use for anything, there are a few Home Chef boxes around the house and at the Toybox. It's helped me to learn to be a better cook and has caused me to stretch my palate as to flavors and items I like. Without question, I will never like the taste of truffles or truffle oil. It tastes like dirt to me. Anyway, with the extra steps required around meals and cooking, I am thankful someone stepped in to help me.

The final thing I need to talk about in the light of adding extra steps has been around the supply chain this year. I have friends in virtually every part of the business world. Anyone who has a physical product needing to be sourced, at one time or another there's been a disruption. One friend waited months for dishwashers and other appliances he used to be able to get in three days. My work has a vendor who has historically been able to provide full loads of product in 3-5 days. Now, their loads dribble in a little at a time over multiple weeks. 

Each of us has to think about the way things work. At the beginning of the pandemic, when toilet paper was almost impossible to get, one thing I thought about was the reality of household and institutional toilet paper being produced in a specific ratio to each other. Suddenly, the institutional side wasn't being hit as hard as residential. I did a little research, and found that I could purchase large institutional rolls with no problem. If we are ever able to visit each other's homes again, don't be surprised by the toilet paper in our bathroom. 

I would also bet that when bacon was hard to find, you'd have gone to a meat distributor, and had no trouble buying a thirty pound purveyor's box of bacon. It would have just taken an extra step or two. 

2020 has been about taking the extra steps, and it has made us all weary, in one way or another.

I hope you find a way to relax and unwind over this long weekend at the end of our summer. Relax and take care of yourself and those close to you. It is the right thing to do.  Take care.

Gentle Breeze

Daniel Acker, Getty Images

There are not many times Iowa comes to the forefront of the news, but I believe last week was one of them.  Last Monday, central Iowa experienced a derecho.  I have lived here my whole life and I had to look up the word. A derecho is a storm of straight line winds with gusts exceeding 100 mph. According to one source, a Iowa is as prone to derechos as Florida is to hurricanes*.

The closest thing I can remember was July 1999 in Minnesota. I went out to look up the information on that event and while it was referred to as a derecho, I remember it being called a "blow-down," mowing across 500,000 acres of Boundary Waters. The reason I remember the event is because my sister, Jaye, was in the middle of it. She literally hid under large fallen trees and when it was over had to hike back out of the area. It was incredibly scary for her, as was last week's storm for people here in Iowa.

From what I can tell, the storm destroyed about ten million acres of cropland across a swath in the middle of the state.  If (big if) the acreage is correct, and half of the crop was lost, and it was all in corn, the lost crops would be just about 1 billion bushels of corn lost this year.  Last year's corn yield in Iowa was 2.58 billion bushels, so it is easy to see this was an unbelievable storm and loss. Beyond the farming loss, over eight thousand homes were damaged or destroyed and at one point half a million people were without power.

In the midst of all of this, I believe we only had three fatalities, which is amazing and a reason to be thankful.  The resilience of the state and the people here never ceases to amaze me. I have to say thank you to all of the utility companies sending crews to help out. I heard there were even crews from British Columbia here helping. Simply amazing. 

One area that was hit was northeast of here around Perry. My company has a bulk plant there and other than no electricity and finding part of the neighbor's roof in the plant, things were fine. Late last week, when I talked to the manager and asked how things were going, he told me everything was taking longer, but all was good. Then he told me with his spare time, after cleaning up his home and helping with family, he was out helping neighbors and customers get things cleaned up. I'm sure this happens with this type of event everywhere but in the middle of a time when it seems like so much conversation and writing is derisive, it makes me smile to hear people just be good with each other.

Most of you know I am in the petroleum business. One thing I discovered in the middle of all this is there is a significant similarity between the petroleum business and the ice cream business. Neither of them works well without electricity. In the days we were without power in our  Des Moines plant, we had to be creative in getting trucks filled and product out to customers needing to work or run generators. 

During the same period of time, without power or a backup of any type, my favorite ice cream place, Hickman Soft Serve, lost all their product. Once we could get back out and around, and I discovered they were shut down, I worried they may not be able to come back from this. As far as I know, this was their first year in this business and although I have done all I can to help them, the sign on the drive through saying, "Closed - No Electricity" was worrisome. I saw the sign on Sunday when I needed ice cream.

Fast forward to Tuesday of this week.  I was still worrying about them, so I called to see if they were open.  When they answered the phone, I recognized the woman's voice. She's usually at the window to take my order. I asked if they were open and she told me yes. Ah, the joy. Then she asked if I was the guy in the brown pickup truck. Of course, I said I was. She told me I needed to wait as the ice cream novelty I usually bought wouldn't be ready for a few days. 

We have lived several places in the United States, but conversations like this make me know that this is home.

If you lost power, or had damage from the storm, I hope you are getting back to normal. I might suggest that today would be a good day for ice cream. Of course, I think any day is a good day for ice cream.

Take care and be careful.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/19/iowa-derecho-hurricane/

Support

In the middle of this year we call 2020, I believe many of us are discovering how much support is required for organizations and people around us. Watching the news has become something to avoid, as it is possible to focus on the things going wrong and find yourself going down a rabbit hole created by the media. However, I continue to be amazed at stories about people doing for others in a way rarely experienced in my lifetime. Many of these extraordinary acts have been around funds for groups needing help, but many have just been simple acts of human kindness. 

Some of you know I work in an industry which can't work from home. Every day, we need to deliver product so all of you can continue in your daily endeavors. We deliver fuel and lubricants. But, as I said, the care we see from both inside and outside the company is amazing. 

Today, I was talking to a salesperson for the company. He is wired to want to get in front of current and potential customers to make a connection so as to continue business growth. Today, we discussed having the respect to stay away from others if they want us to. There are times basic respect is such a powerful thing. As we talked, I told him the story from a couple of weeks ago. I had a salesperson show up without any type of notice, making a true "cold call" at our front door. Not only did I explain they were not welcome in our facility at this time, but I also made a mental note they will most likely never see any business from us. Although respect has, on occasion, fallen out of the business equation, I believe it is more important than ever now. In working with another business or another person, if you begin by making them feel unsafe or insecure, what are the hopes the interaction will come to a good result? I have a ton of respect for the sales team working for me, knowing they are listening and being respectful of the customer's wishes.

The other thing I continue to see is companies stepping out into unknown channels to help in the middle of everything. We have seen large manufacturers step up to help produce items in short supply. We have seen local companies supporting food banks in ways they have never before. And we've seen companies doing extra to try to keep their employees safe. Every one of these examples we see from businesses is being repeated and duplicated in the personal sector as well. I know of many trying to figure out how to support teachers and children in the incredibly difficult decisions being made around education. I know of neighbors who are paying much greater attention to those around them. There are a lot of good folks trying to do the right thing to help all of us get through this pandemic.

So today, I'm going to ask you for your support. As many of you know, I am a big fan of the Iowa State Fair. I've missed a few years, but overall I would tell you I've attended at least half of the years of my life. I love the experience. I love the fact that things change at the Fair, but they do so slowly. I know where to find my favorite lemonade vendor and where to find the best foot-long hot dog. They've been in the same place for decades. But this year they will not be in the same place as the Fair has been cancelled. I believe it is the right decision and am hopeful we will be back for the 2021 season. Like so many other things, in order to make sure the Fair goes forward, there are ongoing needs which must be met. 

Many people think the Iowa State Fair is supported through taxes, but most of the support for the fair and the fairgrounds comes in other ways. One way has been the Corn Dog kickoff. This event, usually held in July, is where people meet and bid, both through silent and live auctions, as well as having the opportunity to feast on many of the standard fair foods. This year, like the fair itself, the Corn Dog Kickoff has not been possible because of the pandemic.

  

In lieu of the live event, the decision was made to have an on-line auction to support the fair. This year, I built and donated a cedar park bench that converts to a picnic table.

There will be hundreds of items available through the auction.  I would encourage you to take a look. It is a great place to start your holiday shopping or just get something fun for yourself. 

The link to the website for the auction is: http://www.blueribbonfoundation.org/events/no-fair-i-do-care-benefit-auction

The auction begins at 10:00 AM August 13th and runs through 10:00 PM August 23.  I hope you will take time to check out the offerings.  

Pieces

Trivets (Etsy) From large to small to perfectly-sized pieces.

One thing I love most about working in my shop is taking large pieces of rough lumber, turning those into smaller pieces and then, in many cases, putting them back together to form larger pieces to create an interesting finished product. 

It is actually the milling of the parts where I find the joy in the work. Of course, delivering finished pieces and knowing they will be around for decades to come is a great part of the process as well.

I also have quilters in my world. Watching their process, I find the experience and the joys are the same. Taking large pieces of raw fabric, turning them into small pieces, followed by recombining the small pieces into a finished project. Then handing off the finished project to someone who will love and cherish it for a long time to come.

As I was thinking of this last weekend, while standing in the shop cutting up pieces of plywood for a library project I am working on, I wondered if there were other examples of this same kind of work. I am sure there are, but the situation I really landed on was with intellectual quilting.

I hope we've all had the opportunity to know some really smart people in our lives. I have known some who are very smart from the point of view of "book" learning, and I've known some incredibly gifted with the practical world around them. But when I consider similarities between the groups, I discovered that they have the ability to take small pieces of knowledge and quilt them together into bigger and better understanding. 

The other thing I was struck by is the variety of potential sources of information we have today to learn little things we can  turn into larger pieces of information. I'm not talking about sources of opinion out on the Internet, but true information sources. The best examples and comparisons of this come from a couple of different acquaintances and conversations years apart. 

The first is from a family who decades ago bought a funeral home. When I asked how Brad how a person learns to run a funeral home, I was told they had gone to the bank, signed the paperwork, and  realized there was no choice but to figure it out. They obviously did, as the business has been successful for years now, but that's a really tough way to learn.

On the other hand, a friend decided to open an embroidery and screen-printing business. When I asked how they had decided to start the business, I discovered that he and his wife watched over sixty hours of YouTube videos, and then bought the necessary equipment. They had learned the best ways to be successful at it. And, by the way, they are successful.

These two stories, separated in time by decades, point out what we have available to us in the time we now live. What is available to us is literally unbelievable. Of course, like everything else, the real question is how we use the information. I believe it is up to each of us to take the time, do the research, and come away with the best understanding we can find.

Now, I am as guilty as any at finding a bite of information and going off believing that what I found is the truth, but this is the point when we all need to be intellectual quilters. We need to know there is not one unequivocal source of information. We take bites from all of it and piece it together just like building a quilt, or a piece of furniture. When so many voices are trying to move us one way or the other based on a comment or a picture, we must look deeper. Do the research to inform ourselves as well as possible. Do the hard work of quilting the information together.

After the research and work is complete, it is still possible we will come to the wrong conclusion, but at least we have a much better choice than believing everything we hear. As I said about my woodworking, it is the work of milling the parts to fit them together I enjoy the most, and I need to be more comfortable with doing the same with the information presented me on any topic. It is my responsibility, nobody else's, to make sure I am armed with the best and most complete information possible.

I am committed to be the best intellectual quilter I can be. Will you commit with me to do the same?

Practice

We all look at the world through a particular lens developed over the experience of a lifetime. I am no different. Now, don't laugh, but today I'm thinking about Gingher replacement blades for rotary fabric cutters and flour. Take a minute to try to put those together. 

Here is the way it works for me. I have several items I buy through Amazon's Subscribe and Save. If you aren't familiar with the program, the way it works is you identify items you would like shipped automatically on a scheduled basis, and Amazon ships on the schedule. Part of the incentive for this plan is a better price; hence, Subscribe and Save. For the last couple of months, the Gingher rotary blade has been unavailable. Although we have inventory in the sewing room, the sewers in my world are concerned about this. 

Now let's turn to flour. This began with a discussion with my sister, Jaye, a couple of months ago. She told me there was a lot of baking going on in their house. Although flour had become difficult to get around the country, their local Hanaford Grocery had remained in stock so far. Since she sometimes sends me the results of the work from their kitchen, this was concerning. I had flour delivered to her. With freight, it may have been the most expensive flour in the country, but we have to do the necessary to keep things going.

To me, the common theme what people are doing during this pandemic. We are in our homes, like we haven't been in generations. With this comes everything people had meant to do, but before this moment in time there were too many distractions. When all of the peripherals are removed, we focus on the things right in front of us. In a conversation with my son last night, we talked about doing puzzles, and cooking at home. If this discussion had taken place a year ago, I would have wondered if we were both all right.

I've found extra time to spend at the Toybox. I've worked on some infrastructure projects, making the shop work better, as well as creating projects for others. I even made a couple of sales through Etsy. It's kind of nice to think about projects I have completed being out there, making others smile or telling a story about how they found this woodworker in the middle of Iowa. 

When I moved back to Iowa and set up the Toybox, I thought of myself as a decent woodworker. I am much better today. This has been driven by the simple fact that I am doing more woodworking. In the past, when I wanted to work, I had to move cars out of the way, and then pull tools and product out of the spaces they were stored in to get work done. It took a large commitment of time and energy just to set up and tear down. All time taken away from actual woodworking.

One day about ten years ago, Dan Keller and I had a conversation. Dan owns an architectural casework and millwork shop, and I've known him for years. He told me that if I wanted to be a better woodworker, I needed to do more woodworking. Wow, right? This is nothing we have not all heard in the past, in many forms, but the day Dan said it to me was the day the information struck me with real impact. So, I got my shop set up and started doing more woodworking.

I believe, but time will tell if I am right, that at the end of this pandemic, we will be a society of people who are better at crafts and talents from generations before. We are going to have more and better seamstresses and quilters. Heck, Gingher can't even keep their replacement blades in stock on Amazon right now. We will have people who thought cooking and baking was voodoo, and now they have the ability to be successful at it. I know I am a better cook today than I was six months ago. We will have better woodworkers because there has been more shop time. It is all about practicing the skills we want to become better at. 

Don't let this opportunity escape you. Do not just sit around and complain that you are unable to see friends and go out for a pizza. That will all return, but it has to be in the right way. Take the time to decide what you have always wanted to get better at, and start practicing the skill. The first time you do something, it will probably not be great. There may be a few bad meals, dry bread, or bad sewing outcomes ahead of you. But if you commit and practice, I know there can be real success in areas you have always wanted to be better in.

Here is a picture of a potting bench I built and finished for Sara last weekend. Ten years ago, this would have been a month-long project and I'd have returned to the lumberyard multiple times as I cut things wrong, or just didn't plan ahead. 

This project came together with one trip to the lumberyard and two days in the shop. 

Practice really matters. 

Now, go work on something you always wanted to master.

Ginormous

You probably know this about me, or have figured it out if you have read my blog for a while.  I was born in the fifties, was too young to truly understand the sixties. I graduated from high school in the seventies. I tell you this simply to put a time frame around my comments today. I think it will be important.

Garbage. Let's talk about garbage. The world I was born into handled garbage in a very simple way. Everything was disposed of through the trash can you hauled to the curb once a week, or it was burned. At my house, we burned paper from the house and the office in an incinerator. It was basically a barrel on wheels set up to provide air to a fire and elevate the temperature and rate of burn to turn everything you put into it to ash. It was very effective. One of my jobs around the house was to empty the trash cans in mom's home office and burn all the paperwork. This was the most effective way to deal with the personal and confidential information from the clients.

So, garbage/trash left our house primarily by being burned or via the garbage truck,. Oh, and a couple of other things. We had a public dump we could always take things to. It was an old rock quarry you could unload things into and the city would manage the process from there. We also had a hole at the bottom of my grandparent's horse pasture we would dump things into and then once a year, hopefully on a calm day, we burned it all in a big fire. It was typically exciting as there were usually aerosol cans in the mix resulting in explosions or in the alternative. The fire might get away from us a little bit - another story all together.

I know, that's a lot about garbage, right? I think the information is important as I need to compare it to today. Today, in my garage there are two trash bins. They are the same size and one is for "single stream" recycling and the other is for trash. The trash is picked up once a week and the recycling every other week. The interesting part is the recycling bin is always overflowing. I could probably use a second container for the recycling. As a comparison, my garbage container could be a quarter of the size it is and there would still be plenty of space. Many weeks the container only has one trash bag at the bottom, only because we went around the house and collected everything.

How did this all change from the seventies until now? Was there a moment in time it was legislated or ruled to change? No, it happened a little bit at a time, one small step, continuing to move toward the point we are at today. I am also sure we're not at the end of the process. Products will continue to be made more recyclable and recycling will continue to get easier. 

Now, how does this all tie to the word ginormous? When the movement moved from hauling and burning garbage to recycling a large part of it, the overall problem was ginormous. There was no way one person could take it on and have any success. What it took was a significant percentage of folks deciding they would do what they could. It would have been easier to throw up their hands and say it was impossible for them, as a single individual, to accomplish anything around recycling. Interestingly enough, I know there are people who still take this position. In the USA, the latest number I could find was 80.1 million tons recycled in the latest reporting year. This is far from nothing. It is still only slightly over a third of the trash produced, but it is a far cry from where we were in the sixties and the seventies. Trash was a ginormous problem back then, and it is less of a problem today.

What I am trying to get at today is a way to think about the ginormous problems of the day. Pick one. Whatever is most important to you. The odds are you are not able to "fix" the problem by yourself. It may take years of starts and stops, of taking two steps forward and one back, to actually have an impact on the problem. But personally doing something about a ginormous problem today will have an effect on it down the road. Don't wait. Decide you are going to do something about the ginormous problem you see as critical today.

I am reminded of an old expression: you can only eat an elephant one way; one bite at a time. I encourage you to think about which ginormous problems is your elephant and take the first bite. You may never even see the change, but it will be there, because of your involvement. I know collectively we can improve our world and make it a better place. And it starts over again, every day. Every day there is the opportunity for each of us to change our world in incredible ways.  

Go ahead, began a change today, or move a change forward.

Optics

In this historical time, as we are all "learning" our way through new and different situations/things, I am sure you have hearing and thinking more and more about the way we look at situations and people. I know I've really had some things which stopped me in my tracks. In a time in my life, when I thought I was pretty set in the ways I looked at the world, there have been moments which shook me deeply. 

In the middle of this I want to say thanks to Sigourney IA, and the family and friends who raised me. I count myself as blessed for all that community and its people put me through.  This includes, but is not limited to, my mom and grandparents, Bill and Leah down the street, the county sheriff, the state trooper, my Jr High and High School principals, and a ton of friends and family.

Why am I thanking these people? For pushing me to look at the world without blinders on. They taught me through word and deed to listen to and learn everything I could. We sat at the kitchen table, or at the table at Bill and Leah's, or in a booth at Spaghett's and talked about the world events and how to think about the world. How to think about it with an open mind. They taught me this within a community backdrop that was pretty homogeneous. In my own way, I saw the world much the way a horse wearing blinders does, only seeing part of it. The thing I thank all the people I grew up around was they pushed a bigger world in through my ears, even while I only experienced a small slice.

Then I had the opportunity to go to school at Drake University. I know there are a ton of great schools out there. Drake is where I landed and it was a tremendous decision for me. Many of you know I had trouble leaving there, it only took nine years. The reason I speak to my Drake years next was this was the time in my life I found out how many different kinds of people there are and the variety of situations they come from. Early in my freshman year, I found myself shying away from others different than myself - their color of skin, religious background, speech pattern, sexual orientation, any number of things. In the middle of it, when I was seeing only with my eyes, I found the words those who raised me had pushed into my head. Honestly that was the moment in time I decided I could learn from all of these people I lived with. So, I worked to take off the blinders. I listened and questioned. I tried foods and music and dance and religion. Thing I had never experienced. I learned a ton. things that would never really be important, but I also found out I was, and still am, a lifetime learner. I am still this today, and honestly, sites like YouTube were absolutely built for me. So, as long as I am able, I will work to take the blinders off and look/listen and learn based on what is around me.

Now, here is one of the points I have a huge blind-spot for. It seems to me that given the rest of my commentary today, I should share at least one. Without question, if someone comes to me looking for a job, while wearing a set of pliers on his belt, I am inclined to hire on the spot. Now, this can't be someone who purchased a brand-new set on the way in to the interview. No, those pliers have to feel like they belong and the person wearing them is comfortable. In fact, in a perfect world, I would want to believe the person wearing them could rewire a nuclear sub with those pliers if they needed to. I've hired people in the lumber business, the distribution business and now the petroleum business with this "badge" and I have never had it go wrong. It might someday, but so far, so good.

When you read this, think about the way you look at the world around you, and the people within that world. Saying that you will "walk a mile in their shoes" is just not possible. We are never able to understand everything going on for another person, or what got them to the point they are , but we can recognize their experience is different from ours, and they have the right to feel the way they want about it. Try where you can to take off the blinders and look at the world the way children do, "through new eyes".

Have a great weekend and learn something.

The Right Thing

In this time we currently live, I find there are many stories about people doing the right thing. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of stories about the darker side of the world as well. I have personally decided to work diligently to ignore those. When I can do this, I find myself feeling brighter about our world.

Of course I have a story or two that make me smile as I think about people doing the right thing. The first story happened after my grandmother's death. She lived in her own home, the house on the hill, until her death at the age of ninety-four in 2000. Grandma had been a force in all the lives she touched, particularly those of us in her family. When it came time to figure out what to do with personal and real property, we did what families do. We gathered. None of us expected that time to be joyous, but we found items that caused each of us to remember Grandma with a smile or a laugh. It was wonderful in its own way. 

In the middle of all we were handling, someone noticed Grandma's car wasn't in the garage. That was odd. So we did what you do in a small town. We called the garage we knew had done Grandma's repair work for years. They'd taken care of the family's vehicles clear back to when she and Grandpa had been over-the-road truckers. Phelps Motors, uptown on Main Street. It took a while to sift through the people and all the information there, but in the end, we discovered the car was there, and had been for a while. At this point, I'm not sure if it was for months or years - doesn't really matter. 

Anyway, somewhere along the line, the people at Phelps had decided that Grandma probably shouldn't be driving. Not driving wasn't a loss of mobility for Grandma. Folks came and took her to dinner or to the Historic Society where she worked. No car didn't mean she wouldn't be able to live her life. 

The thought at the garage was she may not be safe to drive anymore, even though she still had a current driver's license. So, they handled things the way you handle them in a small Iowa town where you care about the people you live with. They told Grandma the parts she needed to repair her car were unavailable and they would have to source them. And then, interestingly enough, they were never able to find them. Ever! So her car sat very peacefully at Phelps until we asked about it. They let us know that we could pick it up any time.  Thinking about it now, I have no idea what happened to the car after that, but the information is unimportant. The community took care of my grandmother's safety and well being and allowed her to maintain her dignity. No one had to tell her that she couldn't drive.

If one story were not enough, fast forward to 2012. When my father-in-law passed away, and the kids gathered to take care of the contents of his town-home, the most interesting thing happened. While they were working, his neighbor from across the street came over carrying a ladder. When asked what was going on, he explained that after watching Keith on the roof the last time, well into his eighties, he decided to borrow his ladder and not to return it. He didn't want to tell Keith that he shouldn't be on the roof. He didn't want to tell the kids that their father shouldn't be on the roof. He had just decided to go ahead and do the right thing. He took care of Keith in the way he could.

Today, tomorrow, make the decision to do what you know is right, even if it is not understood or supported by those around you. When you look in the mirror at the person you are, you will be happier if you have done the right thing. It's not always the easiest, but when you think about it, your choice might be pretty darned important.

Drapery Hooks and Tape Measures

As you have aged, do you occasionally feel you don't remember things as well as you used to? I am here to tell you with almost certainty this is not the truth. You forgot as many things when you were younger as you do now. The difference is you now have more things in your head to keep track of. When you were young and forgot something, you didn't even think about asking if you were forgetting because of your age.

I think a story is in order here. I graduated from high school in 1975. I was raised in a house where knowledge and intellect were important, but some of the more everyday things were less critical. For example, my mom believed dust on top of a piece of furniture didn't count unless someone made a mark in it. So, writing your name in the dust on the top of the console TV had consequences. And ... writing my sister, Jaye's, name brought comedy.

Anyway, I convinced mom it would be appropriate to have some type of graduation party. I didn't want a "cake and mints" type of event, I wanted something with real food people would come to after they went to all the other parties. We started the plans and process of getting ready.

One of the things mom wanted to do as part of the preparation was to clean all the drapery in the house. This was a big undertaking, but it was important to mom, so we dug in. We took all the drapery off the rods and took the drapery hooks out of the drapes. We put the hooks in a bag as we would need them when the drapes came back from the dry cleaner. This process took several days, so there was the period of time when we were living in a house with almost no window coverings. It was just part of the fun. Finally, the drapes were cleaned and picked up. We were ready to reverse the process. Obviously, the first thing we needed were the drapery hooks. They were nowhere to be found. We looked in all every single place you would expect to find them. We knew they had been put in a place "we would all remember." Eventually, mom had to drive to Ottumwa to buy new drapery hooks, a time and money drain we hadn't expected. All ended well as the house looked great and the party went off without a a hitch.  We never found the drapery hooks.

We lost mom in early 1988, so in the middle of that year we started cleaning out the house. One of us, Jaye or myself, cleaned out the junk drawer in the kitchen. Clear in the back corner of the drawer was a bag full of drapery hooks. Yes, they were exactly where we would have expected them to be, exactly where we had looked for them in 1975. Why had we not been able to see them then? I have no answer to this question, but I will tell you with certainty they had much more value in 1988 than they had in 1975. In 1988 they brought laughter to a couple of kids who really needed some relief. We didn't agonize over how it had happened. We didn't ask ourselves if we were getting old. We howled at the situation and thought about how funny Mom would have thought this was. We didn't question ourselves, we just lived the moment.

In my workshop, I have six tape measures. There are times I can not find a single one of them. Frustrating, yes, but I know at this point it is part of my process. I tend to walk around with a tape in my hands and then I'll set it down to work on a piece of the process and don't think about it until the next time I need it. When I need it, I expect it will be "right there" and if it isn't, I start searching the eight hundred square feet of my shop. Typically, I find multiples. It always makes me laugh, especially when I remember Mom and the drapery hooks. When I worked for Payless, on a very regular basis, I'd take a tape measure home on my belt and always forget it the next morning. That usually meant I would take a bunch of them back to work one day.

Long and short, give yourself a break. Just because you do something differently now than you did in the past, or sometimes you think it may take you longer, be okay with it. It is part of the journey we are on and part of the tapestry making up our lives.  I hope you enjoy today, and find a little quiet way to laugh at yourself, just a bit.

Smaller Town

I never expected to type the word "pandemic" but we experience the oddities of a lifetime, one at a time. I think of events in just my lifetime like: the Vietnam war, the oil embargo, various housing crashes, Y2K, 9-11, avian flu, swine flu. economic crashes, and probably several I haven't remembered. The one absolute similarity of all these is that I am still here today, and can look back on each of these events. When we were going through them, nobody was sure what the end looked like, and yet, here we are. I am confident that as a society, we will be here after the Pandemic of 2020.

When we are past this, looking back, we will recognize we learned some things and changed some things which may have been needing to change for a long time. One thing I've been watching is how we are interacting with each other. Sure, I miss going out for dinner or meeting friends as much as the next person, but what I am talking about is bigger. When I drive out to the Toybox, I see more people walking with their family. I see families taking bike rides together and I know we are figuring out ways to connect like never before. One friend talked about playing Yahtzee with his wife, and for the first time, I've had a couple of conference calls with my grand-kids in the last month. These are all different from the way we behaved only a few months ago. Some of this will go away over time, but I think some of it will stick for years, maybe decades to come.

I believe in small ways this is taking us back to a time of smaller towns. Not in actual square footage, but in the way we behave with each other. When I grew up, I was like many of us. Looking back, we did not have an excess of much. In fact, there were many ways we were really challenged. But in the middle of the situation, the communities we lived in took care of us, and we took care of others.

Let me provide a couple of examples. The house I grew up in had chain-link fence around half the yard, and picket fence around the rest. Why? Because mom and dad knew someone in need of work and he couldn't do chain-link fencing. So, the half he did was wooden picket. The same thing happened when they got the ceiling of the shop/garage finished. They had no intention of finishing it, but someone needed work, so they created a job. In the same way, our local grocer took care of my family. He was willing to carry what we owed for almost a year until mom hit tax season and she could catch up. The other thing he did was he gave mom credit for every coupon she brought into the store, whether she bought the item or not. So, even through college, I took our local newspaper and clipped every single ad and sent them home to Mom. I didn't think about how wonderful this was of them to do for us until years later. Finally, my friends in college LOVED the cheese I brought from home. It was great for burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches. I never really considered it was "government" cheese and what it really meant that we were receiving it. Part of what I see us doing now is moving to a new time where people are more engaged and more helpful to each other. We have to have each other's backs.

What I really want you to take away from this is that half or more of where we are in any situation is in our head.  Makes me think of the following story.

ABOUT ATTITUDE (author unknown)
It all depends on the way you look at things.  One day a father and his rich family took his son to a trip to the country with the firm purpose to show him how poor people can be.  They spent a day and a night at the farm of a very poor family.

When they got back from their trip the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"Very good Dad!"

"Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked.

"Yeah!"

"And what did you learn?"

The son answered, "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four.  We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden, and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden, and they have the stars.  Our patio reaches to the front yard, and they have a whole horizon."

When the little boy was finishing, his father was speechless.  His son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are!"

Isn't it true that it all depends on the way you look at things?  If you have love, friends, family, health, good humor and a positive attitude toward life -- you've got everything!  You can't buy any of these things, but still you can have all the material possessions you can imagine, provisions for the future, etc., but if you are poor of spirit, you have nothing.

We need to look at this time from the perspective of the son in this story. I remember a dear friend who talked about a period of time he and his family had to live in the hayloft on an uncle's farm. He talked about it as being the best time of his life. I know I need to look at all this odd event in 2020 with a different attitude. When I look back at my childhood, I would tell you without question I had the fullest, most wonderful of years, with family, friends, and community. We didn't have much, but we had that.

Keep looking for the wonderful stories and opportunities in the midst of what we are going through. The good/wonderful is there, you just have to be on the lookout for it.

Time Well Used

Are you spending more time at home than usual? Yes, that's a ridiculous question. I know you are, just like the rest of the world. We are all trying to decide how to stay sane ... and fair with those who are now around us all the time. But if there is a question about what's important these days, this is the answer. We have to keep each other safe and sane until we find out where the other end of this tunnel is.

Have you taken up a new hobby? I know of people using this time to latch-hook a rug, something they have never done before. Some are knitting again, or sewing, anything to help make the time go by. When all is said and done, we will look back at Christmas 2020 and realize there were more personally-made gifts than ever before or after.

All right, if not a hobby, have you attacked a long-overdue project? I will tell you without question my shop is cleaner than it has been in years. I honestly don't know if this is a plus or a minus. I should use the time to make things, but for some reason, cleaning and organizing has been more reassuring than actually working on projects. This has to change and it needs to happen quickly. I still have a long list of projects to tackle and not moving forward on them is not good. But my shop is beautiful.

What about improving communications with friends and family? People who are committing to stay in touch with others better than usual. Sara has a friend she now calls on Thursday every week so they can check on each other. This isn't a bad plan, and here's a hint from my old Payless days. It really is all right to use a calendar app to help you remember. The member of our group of managers who had the reputation for being the most outgoing and communicative with the rest of us did this. It took us a while to figure it out (I was Wednesday every other week), but even after we figured it out, we were good with it because whatever the tool, we stayed in touch. Maybe you could take more time to talk to those in your circle (figurative circle of course). I've talked to my son and sister more lately than usual and it's been wonderful.

Below is a quote from Seth Godin's Friday the 13th blog post last September.

A useful definition of art

Art is a human activity. It is the creation of something new, something that might not work, something that causes a viewer to be influenced.

Art uses context and culture to send a message. Instead of only a contribution of beauty or craft, art adds intent. The artist works to create something generous, something that will change us.

Art isn’t painting or canvas or prettiness. Art is work that matters.

It’s entirely possible that you’re an artist.

Everyone can be, if we choose.

Maybe now is the time for all of us to be a little more of an artist. Maybe now is when we create something new, or as Godin says above, "something that will change us." In my attempt to do this, I have gone back to work on my Etsy page and added several things. Go take a look and see what I'm doing. Let me know what you think of the things I've been working on. The link is  https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToyboxWoodworking

If you have "art" you've been spending time on, please share it. I would love to see how you are spending this extra time we have all found ourselves with lately.

Have a great weekend, and please, do your best to stay safe and sane.

Change 2020

First, I hope this finds you well and safe in these turbulent times.

Next, as is typically the case, I've been thinking about this situation in the light of my past.  In doing this, there are a couple of things which present themselves. The first is about change in and of itself.

Through years of managing and leading people and organizations, I discovered an undeniable truth about change. It isn't the old situation people have issue with, and it isn't the new. The problem period is always during the actual change as people don't like uncertainty. As a leader, I always knew my primary job through transitions was to inform everyone as best I could, and then make the change occur as quickly as possible. You know, get people to the "new" place.

A large fear in the current situation for is that we have no idea what the new normal looks like, or when it will get here. If we had an answer to either piece of this question, we'd be better equipped to handle the current environment. And (my opinion totally), we worry that the people who know how bad this will get and what we need to prepare for it aren't telling the entire truth. Again, circle back to my original comments about managing through change. It is important to inform people as well as possible. I'm not sure our leadership is accomplishing this.

Last Friday evening I had the opportunity to attend a virtual cocktail party with several people I have professional, and personal relationships with. We talked about business and our personal lives. One of the biggest things I noticed was there was more conversation about family and pets than I ever remember. Many of the people on the call are working from home, and family/pets are now part of the daily landscape. I don't think this is a bad thing, and I hope it is one of the items we keep as we come out of on the other side. Another was how easily we had transformed to a "work from home" environment. Some people on the call were incredibly well prepared and had this situation included in their disaster recovery documentation. For those not so well prepared, the speed that this had come together to get people isolated was amazing. I can't even imagine what this would have been like ten years ago, when working from home was more of an idea than a reality.

One other thing we need to consider at this time is what our businesses will look like going forward. I once worked for a manager who asked us to look at the entire organization as though we were building it from scratch whenever we had a personnel opening. I hated that exercise, but also knew that at the end of the task, we would have a stronger, more agile organization than before. As I speak with folks, I've been told that with the removal of travel and meetings, some of the most senior folks in organizations are wondering if they add value to their company. This is a powerful question and now might be a good time to think about how your company would look, given today's business, if you built it today. Then comes the question of how close you are able to get to the ideal structure. This is where you add the humanity to the program and get as close as you can while helping as many of your employees as you can.

One final note. Go for a walk and look around. It is amazing at how many homes suddenly have a chair outside the front door, or how many neighbors are going for walks in the evening. My household has started riding bikes again. In some type of twisted way, this emergency could be helping us to get back to a simpler, more family-based time. This is absolutely not the way any of us would have done this, but there it is, it might be part of the new normal when we finally get there.

Lift Up

In August 2019, Seth Godin wrote, "Take it seriously. Of course. That’s required. But you don’t have to take it personally. In fact, if you want to be a professional, it’s impossible to do both at the same time."

I can't even put enough words around how important I think this is at the moment. The times we find ourselves in require us to be more professional and better leaders than at any time in the years I have been a manager. People need us to be the voice of reason as well as a voice that helps to identify the path we should follow. I have a couple of examples.

I got an email from Bob Tursi at the Latin King. The Latin King is a generations-old restaurant on the east side of Des Moines, and yes, before you ask, I am on their distribution list as what Bob referred to as "longtime and loyal clientele." For those of you who know me, get over your laughter before we move on. He told us that Latin King would close to dine-in patrons. The thing most impressive to me was the Tursi family decided to do this before the Iowa's governor made a similar decision for the state. Bob saw it as his ethical responsibility to take a leadership role and make the hard decisions.

This morning I received an email from Kyle Krause from Kum & Go. Yes, another food vendor. Go ahead and laugh again, it's okay. He wrote that they were working to protect the community and take care of their employees. The note even went on to say in the event one of their employees needed testing, the company would cover the cost. If people had to self-quarantine, their jobs were safe and they would receive their regular pay.

I find this type of message amazing in the times we find ourselves. And, interestingly enough, I find these behaviors tremendously forward-looking.

I went to work for Payless Cashways in the eighties. There had already been several housing crisis, but one of the worst was in the early eighties. It came on the heels of the 1973 and 1979 energy crises and the Fed deciding to tighten the money supply. This crisis was tough on home-builders with many of them unable to weather the storm. The only way some of the big builders made it through was that their lumberyards carried them for months and even years. Many years later, I worked for a different company here in Des Moines. One of the first stories I heard was how they'd carried their largest customer through a particularly difficult time. In both cases, when those companies came out on the other end of the crisis, they were incredibly loyal to the supplier who cared for them. This was, and I think still is, the kind of loyalty which does not go away over time.

So, what am I thinking about today? I wonder when this is all over, and it will end, will the leaders of companies making the right decisions today? Sometimes we are so short-sighted that we forget people and companies who do the right things for each of us. My hope is this is not the case here. We need to recognize those who take care of us in this uncertain time. When normal returns, we must remember and recognize them. All we have to do is to continue doing business with them and continue to expect to be taken care of the way we always have.

I don't know about you, but I find this amazing. Companies are doing incredible work right now to make sure we stay safe and continue to have items we need in our homes. On top of this, the companies doing this for us aren't even talking to us about it. They are doing the right thing because it is just what they do. They hope we will remain loyal when we come out on the other side. So simple.

If you can do anything to help any others, I encourage you to do it. Even if you can't, recognize those doing the extra and when we're back to normal, remember them. I will tell you with certainty there were home-builders who remembered lumberyards. Trying to sell to one of them from a different supplier was impossible; their loyalty ran deep. I can only hope I can remember that for those who are caring for me right now.

Krulak's Law

Krulak’s Law states that the "future of an organization is in the hands of the privates in the field, not the generals back home."

Some time ago I was in a conversation about excellent customer service. I didn't know this law at the time. Part of the discussion was a challenge to think of the most customer focused organization you could think of, and then ask yourself whether the CEO of the organization woke up every morning, wondering if customers were being taken care of.

Obviously, the answer to this has to be "No." If the leader of an organization has to ask if the most basic of activities is happening on a regular basis, they are doomed to fail.

The basics of the job have to be hard-wired, part of the DNA of the organization. There are some examples which come to mind. In Kansas City, if you enter a Gate's Barbecue, you will be immediately be welcomed with a round of "How may I help you." If you stop into a QT, at least the ones here in Iowa, someone will say "Good Morning" and if you pay in cash, I would virtually guarantee they have the change ready almost before you place the cash on the counter.

New employees are trained for these the types of behavior, but this is bigger. It has become part of the culture. Not behaving in the manner expected is a failure to the culture. In one way, it becomes almost magical.

When I was running lumberyards, we used to talk about teaching "perfect." Many times, the people you were training had never seen "perfect." So, you started improving things with the crew you had. The yard would come to a better place than ever before and everyone was proud. You knew there was still a higher standard. You knew it because you had seen it and managed it before. So you pushed the next level, talking about changes and behaviors and the yard became even better. And you hit a new level. Then, rinse and repeat.

When the yard was finally the way you wanted it, the challenge became keeping it at the level your team had achieved. And then, at some magical moment, it became easier to maintain that level. Why? Because the team saw and understood the level of execution you expected. It became part of the DNA of the organization. As difficult as it was to achieve, it was just as difficult to destroy. With a little effort and occasional maintenance the standard stayed in place and was the new norm.

I've made this sound much easier than it really is. There are so many things pulling us in so many ways every day, it is hard to stay focused. But when you do, the end is something you can be proud of.

I am fortunate to manage a great group of people. They work every single day to achieve/maintain excellence. I have had the good fortune in the last couple of days to be around many of them. It has been a joy. I have the right people in the field and they work every day to differentiate us from the competitors. This will continue to set us apart. And I know we have each others backs. I will look out for them and they will look out for me. This is a good feeling to have, from either side.

Okay, coronavirus. If you are at all like me, I'm not sure what to think about it. I know the extremes of the situation. I have people in my life doing the shopping and the work to be prepared for weeks of being locked in their homes. On the other side, I know people believing it is a complete hoax. I don't land at either of those extremes. I am much more pragmatic.

It looks as though my sister may well cancel her trip to come to Iowa over Easter because travel has been made so much more difficult with the virus. As you know, I was looking forward to her seeing the Teardrop and making plans to pull it all the way home. Not only will I miss seeing her, but it makes this all so much more ... difficult. More to come on this front.

Hope all is good and you are all healthy. Wash your hands and be smart about this thing.