The Dallas Cowboys football team is about as close to a pro sports team as Arkansas gets. We Arkansans relate to them because their current owner, Jerry Jones, and their former coach, Jimmy Johnson, both harken from Arkansas. And their alma mater, the U of A, is a feeder school for the team’s new recruits.
At the end of a long Mother’s Day, Grady said to me, “Sorry you had to work so hard.” My reply was honest and simple: “I enjoyed it.”
I’m old enough to remember life before birth control, when abortions were illegal, and when women died from breast cancer. We have come a long way in women’s healthcare and lifestyle choices, since then.
This summer will be my 50-year high school reunion. Like all reunions, it snuck up and surprised me. But it didn’t surprise me as much as the phone call I got, later.
My parents could be labeled average people, they were steadfast citizens with a moral compass and an honest bias. Growing up, my siblings and I never encountered drinking problems, violence, or infidelity from within our family. I was lucky to have been born to them.
The 2008 recession was not that long ago. Drawing from the experiences learned, we know small businesses were slow to recover, but not as slow as the unemployment rate (which rose to 10%) … Having been laid off from jobs in my youth, I remember the head game it plays on you.
It is not easy to be the rule enforcer at home or at work. The answers of how, when, and what actions should be taken, will be lessened by following these simple and straightforward rules.
The idea of a dancing fundraiser came from a young party planner named John. That’s all I remember about him, other than that he had short, blond hair. In 2009, he had followed a girl to Little Rock, started his party planning business, got divorced (or never married), and he left town.
In my mind, the term “dust bowl” no longer creates images of the Oklahoma drought of the 1930’s, described by John Steinbeck in the book Grapes of Wrath. Now, it describes my current work week.
How do we come back? Or even, do we come back? And, if we do, when and how do we come back?
After a two-year hiatus that started with the first Covid outbreak, these are the questions that the Friends of Dreamland (FOD) had to ask themselves. And the answers are, respectively: Yes, Yes, February 12th, and with a safe fundraiser called Dancing Into Dreamland (DID).
Well, I finally did it. I’ve talked about it, dreamt about it, and needed it for years; I hired an assistant!
We have found some fun ways of managing stress at work.
Everyone has been affected by the pandemic of 2020. Service industries are stretched, business supply chains are disrupted, and consumers are on long wait lists.
My business mentor, Charles Fisher, was a prankster aficionado. He did things like poke a tiny pin hole in the side of your soda can, just below the tab opening, so that every time you took a sip it would dribble down your chin. For all new employees, he would leave pink return call slip on their desk with the phone number to a funeral home asking them to return a call to “Myra Maines.” He always had a joke ready for any occasion.
An aversion to rules is one of the reasons many entrepreneurs become business owners. They are not conformists and find big company policies stifling. I am no exception. But I have learned through the years that written rules keep things fair…and I am all about being fair.
When I was in high school graduation was contingent on the completion…
I remember my mother saying that no matter how old her children…