As the weather changes, you may be like me and begin to feel the effects of seasonal depression. The phenomena is so prevalent that healthcare providers have even given it a name and an acronym:  Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This is a type of depression that happens around the end of October with the symptoms being a lack of energy and feeling of hopelessness. Many connect it to the reduction in sunlight, but I think my onset is more from being cold. I don’t like to be cold.

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To rest easy, my mother always said she had to see where her babies, no matter how old, laid their heads at night.

With that in mind, Grady and I made a trip to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois to see where son Jack was now living. If you remember the past few months, he graduated from Ohio State University, got married, accepted a new teaching job at Illinois State University, and moved to suburbia.

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It may seem too early to start planning for Christmas. But for us retailers, it is late. Most retailers buy their holiday stock in January, with a late fall delivery schedule. Though FAB doesn’t have all its holiday inventory on display yet, we still need to start planning our advertising campaigns, buying ad space, and ordering print material for our December mailers.

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Salespeople are a lot of help. I know they are often stereotyped as a nuisance, as robocalls are (which aren’t real people), but a good salesperson is more like a secretary to their client. And, over the next ten years, both salespersons and secretaries alike could become an endangered species as they are replaced by chat bots, electronic calendars, and online tutorials.

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Have you been wondering what ever happened to the restauranteur Rodney Ely, founder of Satellite Coffee and Rodney’s Chicago Dogs that used to be in Little Rock, Arkansas?
Well, I found him in Ft Lauderdale, FL. And, as per usual, he’s serving up the best quality, delicious food and creating inviting dining environments. 

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For a person who likes change, I’m in a rut.
FlagandBanner.com is over 45 years old, I’ve been married for over 35, and I’ve lived in the same house for three decades. This rut, I don’t want to change. I love my life. But I would like a new creative project to work on. For me, business is my creative outlet. I like building things and solving problems in groups but only if I have the final say (self-awareness is a virtue).

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Salespeople are a lot of help. I know they are often stereotyped as a nuisance, as robocalls are (which aren’t real people), but a good salesperson is more like a secretary to their client. And, over the next ten years, both salespersons and secretaries alike could become an endangered species as they are replaced by chat bots, electronic calendars, and online tutorials.

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Prior to emails and the internet changing our lives, English teachers worried that writing was going to become a lost artform. Ma Bell had turned all of us into voice communicators, making lawyers the only letter writers left. In this school of thought, typing classes were dropped from many high school curriculums. But alas, the power of the pen is back, big time, along with keyboarding. It’s time to dust off the old grammar books and learn some new tricks on how to write a good email.

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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).

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