22Apr 2014 by CJ

In today’s society everyone is so easily offended

Life & Living
When I was in Mrs. Mason’s third grade class, I remember every morning, without fail, we’d say “The Pledge of Allegiance” followed by the singing of our National Anthem. Commonly referred to as being from the “old school”, Mrs. Mason already had several decades of teaching under her belt before I ever stepped foot inside her classroom. I recall a small, round harmonica she kept in her top desk draw. She’d play a “C” sharp each and every morning to ensure we all started singing in the same key. Could you imagine this being done in the classrooms of today? Beyond the reading, writing and arithmetic, Mrs. Mason taught us about respect for life, respect for each other and respect for our country. A dedicated and prolific historian in our…
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16Apr 2014 by CJ

We want to know everything – especially if it’s NOT newsworthy

Life & Living
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” And while newspapers have completely lost their relevance in modern day society, replacing the word “newspapers” with “the internet” would not be a huge stretch at times. I try to educate myself about what’s going on in the world whenever I can, but I’m not sure many of the popular online news outlets are doing a very good job. Take today for instance. With everything going on in the world, CNN.com chose to place the following headline at the top of the day’s news. “Rapper Andre Johnson severs penis, jumps off building” Hmm…I’m not sure what to make of that one. CNN.com, like so many other online news…
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14Apr 2014 by CJ

The streets are not your personal garbage can, so STOP littering!

Life & Living
This weekend the sun was brightly shining and the temperatures rose to the upper 70’s. Therefore the last place I wanted to be was cooped up inside – especially after the brutal winter the north east was forced to battle this year. The weekend was a mix of leisurely enjoyment and household chores – hiking through the mountains on Saturday, and doing yard clean-up outside on Sunday. Regardless of the activity, just being outside was enjoyment enough. While in the front of my house, picking a few weeds between the cracks of the sidewalk, a car came racing down the block – loud music blasting from four open windows, though not loud enough to mask the sound of its obnoxious muffler. I sound like an old man now, don’t I?…
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02Apr 2014 by CJ

The worst kind of marketing is bad customer service

Life & Living
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” ~ Damon Richards We all hope the products and services we purchase, after great consideration, will not be met with disappointment or costly repairs. But few things in life are perfect and you’d be naïve to think that problems will not arise at one point or another. For me such problems decided to pay a visit in threes – an airline, a car company and a promotions warehouse. I wish I could say that my dealings have been noteworthy – a model for true customer service in the marketplace. But it hasn’t. As Donald Porter once said, “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”…
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31Mar 2014 by CJ

Everything involves risk – but you’ll never know what will happen unless you take one

Life & Living
“You can’t outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything you have to play the game or you don’t play at all. And if you don’t play you can’t win.” Judith McNaught We all possess hopes and dreams for our day to day existence. We all conjure up ideas of how they might play out and what they might actually look like. Having been raised to avoid risk taking in life, as much of society has, I’m no stranger to keeping dreams buried deep in the chambers of my mind – leaving them there to go unfulfilled. But the older you get, the more you realize that our time her on planet Earth is far…
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