Pat Shiplett Writes About People.
There’s a moment before the start of a symphony when vibrations float above the orchestra.
It isn’t music exactly.
But it isn’t cacophony either.
Certain instruments break through the drone and send out sounds like mating calls in a forest — a piccolo looking for a willing woodwind, one tuba looking for another.
Symphonic tuning is more theater than necessity. Virtuoso artists take their chairs knowing their tools are, forgive me, fit as a fiddle. Read more…
Our children are murdered at a rate early Americans couldn’t have imagined.Our Constitution holds that Domestic Tranquility, Common Defense and The General Welfare are non-negotiable goals.
A docile, limp-dick surrender to unregulated gun violence isn’t mentioned.
A school shooter with AR-15 technology can fire more rounds in a minute than a colonial minuteman could muster in a hour.
Read more…
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted thirteen Russian nationals and three ‘entities’ for sowing distrust, hatred, religious and ethnic divisions to undermine our democracy.
Their efforts began in 2014 and were surprisingly successful.
Experts agree it’s hard to imagine that Vladimir Putin wasn’t aware of his team’s efforts get Donald Trump elected.
“…The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” — Genesis 2:15.
You don’t have to be religious to understand why this passage appears in the scriptures that define three world religions.
We learned to work with fire. We shaped stone and smelted metals. We came to manage water and to cultivate lands. We domesticated animals for the nutrition and the labor they provide.
Read more…
The woman in our riddle started her career on Madison Avenue during the ‘Mad Men’ years.
Here’s a riddle:
Why didn’t the woman know how to type?
There were no signs of injuries around the digits of her fingers. There was no swelling at the knuckles or wrists, not a wrap or a brace to suggest carpel tunnel.
She kept her nails at a practical length and she used a grip strengthener during conference calls. To this day she spends time in front of the Steinway in her living room.
Here are some clues.
The woman in our riddle started her career on Madison Avenue during the ‘Mad Men’ years. She drove herself to escape the gravity that held stenographers, secretaries, receptionists and ‘gal-Fridays’ in low-level jobs.
Women newly promoted out of the clerical ranks faced a slippery slope. They risked being enlisted to “take a letter” and type it “just this once.” If that happened often they could dragged back into the steno pool.
The subject of our riddle worked her way into senior management positions and came to be recognized as a ‘Women of the Year’ in her profession.
I met Marion when she was recruited as a rainmaker at an international advertising agency. She was exceptionally savvy and we lined up to share assignments with her.
When Marion and I launched our own boutique marketing-services firm a few years later, we outfitted our small team with state-of-the-art IBM Selectric Typewriters.
Although it’s almost certain she had been able to knock out fifty words a minute during college and in her entry-level positions, Marion’s index fingers never once settled on the home keys of our typewriters.
Like many females who broke into the executive ranks in those years, Marion had learned something more important than how to type. She had learned how not to type.
