Father John R.W. Stott

This week I have longed for something about which to opine that did not involve Democrats, Republicans, bond ratings or arcane arguments about the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

As I write, I find that the addage "be careful what you pray for" is true.

At 815 AM local time in London this past Wednesday, Rev. John R.W. Stott passed away.

If you are not familiar with him, Father Stott was a Biblical scholar in the truest sense of the word. He loved the Bible, passionately loved it. He loved it because he loved Christ, and had a profound sense of precious value of salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

Father Stott knew he had nothing to bring to the table, that it was all God.

As a result, he was compelled to lovingly write, speak, teach, tell others about his Truest Friend.

In 1974 at the International Congress on World Evangelization, John Stott substantially framed the document now known as the Lausanne Covenant, a call to the Church and a framework for proclaiming the Gospel - in a true, unapologetically Biblical, and ECUMENICAL context.

That is why I so loved him. John Stott could embrace the denominational differerences within the church, not decry them, but see them as part and parcel of the way God works.

He could do this because he knew what the essentials of the Gospel were - things that were predicate to, warp and woof of, the Good News. He could and did give sway on the lesser points.

John R.W. Stott was - to the surprise of many on this side of the pond - an ordained, faithful Anglican priest - not a hardshell Baptist or a Pentacostal. Yet, a Baptist or Pentacostal reading his works would find much to love.

To a Calvinist and closet Anglican like myself - he was and is permission to love God's word, desire for others to know Him, and find encouragement and sheer joy at Scripture filled, prayerbook worship.

His commentaries on various books of the Bible, especially his work on the Acts of the Apostles, served to encourage me when my own fallen nature has shown not to be fully submitted to the love of Christ.

Part of me is hugely grieved at the loss of this giant of a man.

The rest of me says - "Thanks for all you did for me Father Stott. See you soon."

Electric and Gas Deregulation

Okay.

I am actually saying something nice about Obama, and no it is not a sign of the apocalypse.

The Obama administration has apparently gotten it right on pushing, or at least not getting in the way of, deregulation of electricity and gas delivery.

I for one, see opportunity here, and am so grateful to the President, that I may just show up at the groundbreaking for the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in 2013.

Multiple Income Streams - Part Deux

This week, for a miriad (that means "alot") of reasons, I implemented a plan to develop three new businesses.

No, I have not quit my core business, as I still have much opportunity to create value there. I concluded, coming out of the recession, that I have to take responsibility for my own outcomes, trusting God for wisdom, but using what He has given me.

So, we are launching two businesses somewhat related to what we do in our law firm, and another related to new technologies/telecom/energy delivery.

None of the three are purely original, but each one was an idea someone who cared about me shared.

My job is to share the value of these ideas with the people who need them - some to help carry them further, and others to benefit from them - - -

And pay for them.

All We are Saaayyyinng is Give Wealth a Chance

‎"I would rather have 10,000 rich men handing out jobs than one (guy) at the top talking about "shovel ready" projects." ~ James Patrick Riley

Someone passed the quote above to me earlier. I posted it on Facebook and a liberal friend of mine - What? I used to be a liberal, so why can't I have liberal friends.

Anyway - this friend pointed out that a term for which I made a parenthetical replacement may have been disrespectful.

Without the term, Riley's statement remains valid. Even the President had to admit - much as Roosevelt's Treasury chief in 1938 - that the shovel ready projects were not so shovel ready.

So, what's the alternative? The billionaires, millionaires, and mass affluents that the President wants to pay their fair share?

Well, maybe he would have a point if those guys kept their money hoarded. 


But they don't.

They buy things. They invest. They start companies.

All of those things mean that women and men have to be hired to get the jobs done.

So, to paraphrase John Lennon.

Let's "give wealth a chance."

Dog Poop - The Real "Mother of Invention"

If you read one of my earlier posts, you know that my daughter's Rottweiler-Yorkshire Terrier mix, Medusa, ate a small screw Thursday night while I was changing a belt on our vacuum cleaner.

It had a blunt tip, so we weren't completely worried about damage from eating the screw.

Nonetheless, I was tasked with searching the backyard - a supply of dog-poop bags in hand. The objective was to palpate the bags of poop in search of a hard object.

Sounds like reading an Obama campaign position paper. But I digress.

As I have clinically dianosed ADD, I used the time searching for the Holy Grail of Dog Excrement to let my mind loose and see if anything creative occured.

It did.

I'd had a particularly irritating week. Between the challenges of making rain - which usually is great fun - and the process of delegating things that are not my Unique Ability(tm), I was feeling pretty stressed.

Then an idea came.

That idea was followed by another.

Then a goal came to mind, and from there a process.

After my sweep of the yard - several bags of poop - no screw - I texted my friend Erik.

Erik is another entrepreneur. If bad company is the ruin of good character, Erik is the kind of guy an entrepreneur wants to be sure to run with.

I gave him a date in mind for a rather grand goal.

That led to more texts with the goal fleshed-out.

Erik, as I knew he would, said he would guide me.

Invention had arrived.

And its mother is Dog Poop.

No - That is not how to join a metal band

Thursday night, I replaced a belt on our Obama January 2009 Vacuum.
Okay, it's a Eureka "The Boss."
Fully functional, both really suck, when you think about it. But I digress.
I laid the three screws you take off to get to the belt, and laid them on the hearth of our fireplace.
My daughter's dog, who I refer to as Medusa, noticed the screws, and ate one.
May start referring to her as Metallica.

Value Creation and Multiple Income Streams

Each year, I do an exercise called a "One Year Planner."
It has ten objectives I want to achieve to make progress in important areas of my life.
The "OYP" I laid out in May included an objective of developing new income streams.
Why?
Dan Sullivan is co-founder, with his terrific wife - Babs Smith - of The Strategic Coach in Toronto, ON. Dan points out that if one is an entrepreneur who happens to be a CPA, the creative possibilities are much greater than being hemmed-in by the reverse.
In our law firm, we have had several ideas for related businesses, for which we have identifiable demand, that are not professionally legal in nature, and could create value for clients and their other advisors with Unique Processes(tm). Maybe it is time to act on those.
Recently, I have been exposed to ideas that MDs, CPAs, pharmacists, and educators have leveraged into various multiple income streams.
The point is, this is still an economically free society. God made us in His image, and He is creative.
The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Rio Grille - Rest in Peace

Last night, when driving home from the Greenville Drive baseball game, I noticed that my favorite dining experience in Greenville, a Brazilian steakhouse called Rio Grille had closed.
Bummer!
I glanced at my daughter in the rearview mirror.
Maybe if they'd thought of a play area.

The Day I Became a Chippendale, or Why I Dislike Fireants

A few years ago, I was in Jupiter, FL for a six-hour endurance kart race, a good warm up for the 2nd running of the 24 Hours of America at the same course the following month.

I should have known that trouble was brewing when there were eight vultures circling overhead.

I was standing in the the pit area for the driver's meeting with my good friend Jeff Smith from Tampa. He was driving in the race with me, and a couple other of his family members. Jeff's company was underwriting the expenses of the race for our team, so I was there just to do my job - drive and get practice for the 24.
I already had my racing suit on - a bright yellow one. We were paying rather close attention to the instructions from the race director when -
I STARTED TRYING OUT FOR THE CHIPPENDALES.
Jeff looked at my hand and then the legs of my suit and saw that I was standing on a fire-ant mound.
Without thinking, I immediately unzipped the one-piece suit and threw it off. It was then I started to feel self-conscious. The good news was that I was wearing running shorts and a t-shirt.
Women at the track swooned as I gyrated trying to get out of the suit, and then repelled the attack once freed.
The bad news is that the fire-ants viewed me as an all-you-can-eat super buffet.
The race director asked for the EMTs at the track to come over to me.
I was still pretty lucid.
The pair of EMTs I had drawn had rather dark senses of humor.
After giving me some swabs to start treating the bites, one of them asked if I felt like I was going to pass out.

His partner commented that the question may be psyching me out.
After my arms, hands, fingers, legs, feel and toes had been treated, I realized I did not have a racing suit to use now.
The infested suit was bagged and sealed in plastic, and I prayed they would not find a way to get out of the luggage hold and into the cockpit on the flight home the next day.
I did find myself wondering if all of AirTran's flights out of Palm Beach did barrel rolls after wheels-up.
And I did not choose to seize the day and turn my fire-ant experience into a career as a "girls night out" entertainer.

Multiple Income Streams and Having Evil Plans

Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod is becoming one of my favorite business books ever. One of my heroes in the world of entrepreneurs, Dan Sullivan, recommended this book, and I am glad he did.

An "evil plan" is that concept, idea, process by which you express a passion, particularly as an entrepreneur, that even if most of the world thinks you are a complete idiot to pursue, you are joyously oblivious to all else but The Plan.

Sort of like sex.

Or the ground-breaking of the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in 2013.

Or leveraging a Unique Process(tm) or two.

Where's Eleanor?

August 2nd of last year, I was in a pretty stout traffic accident.

A young mom in a mini-van had just taken her infant daughter to the pediatrician for some routine shots.

Mom was distracted by her daughter, ran a red light, hit the left front corner of a pick-up, and then hit my car in the driver's door.

The result, after spinning my Bonneville, was a buckled roof, a level 2 brain concussion, and an end to a racing season that I was starting late in.

When my wife and daughter arrived, the driver of the mini-van asked me how I was.

I told her I was hearing voices-

Eleanor Roosevelt - pleading with me to take her to the prom!

The young mom was clearly concerned, until my wife told her I was okay.

Thing is, any of us who has ideas, creates value, develops concepts, writes short stories, paints - you name it - "hears voices-" the muses, the motivators, the inspirations from which the "art" of life issues forth.

Sometimes, if I am burned-out from going too fast, doing too much, for too long, I find myself operating mechanically, even reactively - a victim of life rather than an actor upon it.
I realize then I am not hearing the voice in my head, and I have to ask -

"Where's Eleanor?"

Have you "heard from Eleanor" today?

Leadership, John Maxwell, my friend Erik

Every Monday, for the next 10 weeks or so, I am in a group of ten entrepreneurs. We are studying John Maxwell's irrefutable laws of leadership.
The leadership qualities I find most attractive, and seem to pop up to my attention as a result of this study, are visionary decisiveness, a reproducing success focus, and humility.
Things that make you want to follow someone, to have ownership in the vision.
I see that kind of leader in lots of places now.
The Prime Minister of Canada is a good example.
Howden Hanes, the courageous race engineer who produced a win for Audi at LeMans in 2008 when the French Peugeot team was the dead-on favorite, is another great example.
And, I saw it the other day when I had coffee with a 30ish former MLS soccer player who seized opportunity and built a life outside of his sport.
In all three of these cases visionary decisiveness, reproducing success focus, and humility were and are evident.
Would that I could develop such qualities.

Thanks Salvador!

Several years ago I was doing some post-doc studies at an institute that later became attached to Michigan State University. They would get the fellows together at different places in the Country to be fair as we were a geographically diverse bunch.

During some classes in St. Petersburg, I went to the Salvador Dali Museum there.

I love Dali's work. Funky to the max.

One of his quotations - "The only difference between myself and a madman is - I am not mad!" was to be found on a coffee mug in the gift shop.

I bought the coffee mug.

Liked the quote so much I had it put on my helmet.

Still, you have to be a wee bit mad to 80 to 100+ mpg, a half-inch off the ground, with no seatbelts.

Ich Bien Ein Canadien, Y'all

Recently, I friended a really great guy and his wife who were friends of My Reason for Living and myself while I was in law school.

Today, he asked me what was up with "the Canuck" thing.

Gosh. Where do I begin?

When I was in college, we had a number of Canadian students. They expressed to me a certain irritation, and surprise, that Americans know so little of Canada, when Canadians seem to make it a matter of importance to know about us.

So, I developed a fascination with our Great Neighbor to the North.

When the worst President ever took office in January 1977, a few of us in my econ class joked about moving to White Horse and getting as far away from the intrusive reach of the Carter Administration as we could.

In subsequent years, I followed Rene Levesque and Parti Quebecois.

When the shortest serving Prime Minister since Confederation took office, I knew who people were talking about when they mentioned "Joe Who?"

Shoot, I even represented a Canadian company who was one of Winn-Dixie's creditors when the grocery store chain went into bankruptcy.

Two things occured about the same time. A conservative wind blew in from the Plains of Alberta when Prime Minister Harper formed a minority government.

Almost concurrently, Chicago's answer to C.S. Lewis's White Queen blew into DC, and for a while it looked like it would be "always winter, and never Christmas." (Especially given the Administrations hostility to views of Founding Fathers like John Adams.)

Jimmy Carter quickly moved up from worst to penultimately worst. Things are looking up Jimmy! Eh?
I quickly came to admire Stephen Harper, a man of great Christian faith, whose witness has been borne out in his style of governing - strong yet humble.

And I have yet to hear him apologize for Canada. On the other hand . . . well POTUS is not exactly wired the same way.

Canadians seem to agree with Harper. They gave the Conservatives a decisive majority - one that means less campaigning and more effectiveness.

Harper and crew are doing a great job of getting the (Canadian) Federal government out of the way. Businesses are growing, Canadian exports are up. The Canadian dollar is doing nicely.

When our leader misses the lessons of a socialist history, I like to contrast him to Stephen Harper.

Harper seems to understand what is at stake when it comes to Israel.

I don't seem to recall the Prime Minister of Israel going to Ottawa, and delivering a rebuke to Mr. Harper.

But I do remember former British PM Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy rebuking Prime Minister Harper when Harper wanted to join hands with the Iranians and sing Kum Bah Yah.

No, wait, that was Barack Obama they rebuked after his wanting to "dialogue" with the Iranians bought them enough time to go nuke.

I feel like channeling Lloyd Bentsen -

Mr. President, I know Stephen Harper (at least I feel like I do), Stephen Harper (is like) a friend of mine. Mr. President, you are no Stephen Harper.

Whenever I get that feeling, I remind myself, that he is our President. I am looking forward to the ground breaking of the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in Oak Grove, Ill - Spring 2013!

Prime Minister, let's meet up for the ground breaking, and then head to Harry Caray's for steaks and beers.

The Casey Anthony Verdict: Why we should feel comforted.

Like most of everyone else I know, I was really surprised by this.

I fully expected that she would be found guilty of something more than just the lying to the police counts.

So, what the heck happened?

What happened was that the system of justice in Florida worked, and that we all - as Americans - should take comfort.

In the Anthony case we have a very good judge - one who bent over backwards to ensure that the defendant remained cloaked with a presumption of innocence.

We had a very able prosecution team, well prepared, who made good arguments.

And, we had a defense team whose primary job, as distasteful as anyone else might think it, was to convince the jury that the State of Florida had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Those of us watching it at home, or on the net at our offices, were angry from the moment we first saw Casey on TV last decade. As time wore on, we became more and more piqued. Like the Ron Silver character in National Treasure, we believed someone had to go to jail, and we knew who it was - Casey.

That goes to the core of why we, as incredulous as we may be, should take comfort.

In this case, a jury, sequestered, never hearing or seeing the pronouncements from the bench on certain motions, never being swayed one way or the other by talking heads on cable news outlets, carefully applied the law they were given by the trial judge. The jury, unemotional, was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.

They found her not guilty.

Not guilty is not the same as innocent, however.

Casey Marie Anthony may be (is?) the person who murdered her daughter. But a jury of her peers, one of the greatest protections we as Americans enjoy, was not convinced that the State had proved its case.

Trial by jury on the facts, and not vigilante justice fueled by emotion.

God bless America, the State of Florida, and the Constitution of the United States.

Amen.

Inspiration, Hyper-focus, and Some Dangerous Handling of Wild Animals.

At the encouragement of my good friend, Hugh MacLeod, I have decided to finally start writing a blog.
Well - - - Actually I will write two of them- - One a professional blog, and the other (this one) an outlet for my inner adventurer who is forever rafting down a rain-swollen stream of consciousness.

And, I don't really know Hugh MacLeod, but I have read both of his books (Ignore Everybody and Evil Plans, Having Fun on the Way to World Domination). Like many readers, I feel a kind of connection to an author whom I like.

Earlier today, I posted as a Facebook status that I was "juggling wolverines." Somebody liked it, and I had a comment or two.

Those of you with ADD/ADHD, and those of you whose life is made a living hell by someone who does, may understand the idea of "hyper-focus." Someone with the "gift" of ADD/ADHD can indeed concentrate, but it is often to the extreme.

I had such an experience this evening with "juggling wolverines." I wound up obsessing over it like a guy who holds a door open for a nice girl, and after she says thank you, immediately sends out save the date cards for the wedding.

For years, My Reason for Living insisted that I had ADD. I blew it off as so much psycho-babble.

Then I had an epiphany.

In July 2004, I was in Evora, Portugal driving for TeamUSA in the 24 Hours of Evora, an endurance go-kart race that attracts drivers from F1 and Le Mans racing. Yes - - there is such a sport, and yes - - I did race for what amounts to the US National Team. The pic above is of me on the left, with Pedro Lamy, a Portuguese F1 driver, who went on to race for Peugeot and win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

It was about 10 pm in Evora. I had just taken over our kart from a teammate and was a few minutes into the 45-minute stint when I found myself on the second fastest point on the course . . . and my mind was wandering . . . at a rather high rate of speed, given that we don't use seat belts.

And this was occurring right before an extremely difficult, and rather dangerous turn.

Epiphany . . . test of bladder control . . . call it what you will.

Sooooo, upon getting home, I called a friend who is a behavioral pediatrician.

Given the fact that I am regularly judged immature, this seems a reasonable thing, no?

Actually, I had done some public policy stuff with this guy in the 90's, I knew he had ADD, and would be sympathetic.

Turns out he had taught my personal physician how to screen for it.

I went to said physician.

He screened for it.

He rolled on the floor, incapacitated with laughter.

"You have Attention Deficit Order." Dr. Mengele told me, "and I hate to break this to you so bluntly . . ."

"Yes, Doctor???"

"Frank, your case is TERMINAL."

More uncontrollable laughter.

For a brief moment, I rued the fact that in my day job, I work to protect the assets of doctors from "blood-sucking malpractice attorneys" (that is a technical term . . . forgive me).

He gave me a prescription.

I found an executive coach who understood entrepreneurs with ADD, and liked motor sports.

And I began a conscious journey to learn how to make having ADD a positive.

The good news is that it can be . . . and I thank God that I do have it.

Oh . . . the hyper-focus thing . . .

When something catches our attention, or we (those of us with ADD/ADHD) focus our attention on something interesting/important/exciting to us, we are pretty much like my Rottweiler-Yorkie mix, Medusa - on it like white on rice, and yapping about it to anyone who will listen.

You see alot of us in trial law, emergency room/trauma medicine, extreme sports, and racing. Get us in our favorite element, and with some exceptions (like I had racing in Portugal in 2004) we get into The Zone.

The rest of the time, we often find ourselves managing crises, and trying to select the most effective place to apply ourselves.

And, it often does not occur to us to ask for help, or delegate, or outsource, or GET ON OUR KNEES AND PRAY TO A GRACIOUS GOD FOR SOME HELP!!!!!

Thus, we find ourselves "juggling wolverines," mindful that if we drop one, it will likely express its displeasure at being mishandled in a rather painful way.

More later. For now I am hyper-focusing on a wolverine I just dropped.