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Archive for June, 2010

“You don’t sip wine, you drink it,” and other essential life skills from a centenarian

Janet jpg

What Would You Like to Ask Janet?

Our friend Janet turns 104 on October 15, 2010. She clearly recalls the sinking of the Titanic when she was six. She remembers the smell of the picture house and the sound of the piano player next to the stage when she saw her first silent movie.

She compares herself to an aging baseball player who can’t run the bases so well any more. Although she admires Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she is suspect of his intentions regarding the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Janet says the best family time is long conversations over meals. The secret to longevity is swimming every day, which she still does, and a glass of red wine during lunch. Every lunch.

“You don’t sip wine. You drink it. Just like the Europeans.”

Janet is a treasure.

Our sons and I are making a film to explore Janet’s ideals on how to live a happy, healthy and sustainable life. To grow old gracefully. What would you like to ask Janet? Please send us your questions in the comment field below, or through the contact form in the upper nav. bar of my blog.

Or follow the conversation on Facebook.

You can ask Janet anything. Although her hearing is fading, and you need to get pretty close for her to recognize you, she is as sharp as if it were 1935.

We will film Janet’s replies and make sure you receive a copy of her answer to your question.

CityGolfTour.com Celebrates the Hacker in Us All

Not since greenskeeper, Carl Spackler, fired the shot from the Mum bed heard around the world of Bushwood C.C., has the amateur golfer been more celebrated.

Until now.

I’m proud to bring you, now on the first tee, playing out of Seattle, Washington, CityGolfTour.com.

Today, we helped launch a revolution in fantasy sports. CityGolfTour.com provides ANY golfer the opportunity to compete in national tournaments that you can play from your favorite home course. All you need is a USGA handicap and a City Golf Tour membership in this new concept in tournament golf.

Play begins in their inaugural tournament on July 12, 2010.

CityGolfTour

CityGolfTour.com is the brainchild of husband and wife team, Jack Hutt and Wendy Anderson. They have been running a Seattle golf league for amateurs by the same name for around ten years, when they decided to expand their vision online.

Golfers at every skill level are invited to compete.

CityGolfTour.com uses a combination of the player’s USGA handicap, the slope rating of the course they’re playing, and some secret sauce algorithm to level the playing field for fair competition. This way a 15+ handicap hack like me can compete with the Eubank phenoms of the world.

A total of $500 in cash prizes are awarded to the top 20 players, while 10% of all tournament entry fees goes to charity. Really, though, I think it’s going to be more about bragging rights than bucks. There’s still that competitive streak in all of us, even if it’s just with ourselves.

The first question everyone asks is, “How are they going to keep people from cheating?” Here’s your answer.

So tee one up for charity and make CityGolfTour.com a part of your game.

In the words of Carl, “It’s a Cinderella story.”

The Power of “If,” A Kind of User’s Manual for Life.

Our kids Caedon, Parker & Corbin, and son-in-law, KC

Our kids, Caedon, Parker & Corbin, and son-in-law, KC

I was given a great gift for Father’s Day this morning that I wanted to share with my kids, and you. Actually, it came from a book my wife Michele gave me yesterday, “One Can Make a Difference,” How Simple Actions Can Change the World.

The book is sustainable storytelling at its best. It features a collection of essays written by both powerful celebrities and average Joe’s. One story by Sean Astin, actor and son of actress, Patty Duke, reminded me of the Rudyard Kipling poem, “If.”

It’s not just a poem, but a kind of user’s manual for life.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Sustainable Storytelling: How a Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures

 Click here to see the creative behind Goodwill of Central Arizona's new outdoor campaign

Click here to see the creative behind Goodwill of Central Arizona's new outdoor campaign

When was the last time you found something shopping and mentally yelled, “Scooooooooore!”? You pictured yourself  knifing your arms above your head like a Super Bowl ref signaling a touchdown. You did a silly little, “Uh huh, that’s right, I’m bad” dance between your ears.

We all know the feeling.

It’s those emotional cues that prompted our new outdoor campaign for Goodwill of Central Arizona. We married one item with one word to conjure up a thousand rewarding pictures in the minds of those who donate and shop at Goodwill.

Goodwill Transit ShelterMore importantly, it’s designed to create a snapshot of possibilities in the craniums of those who don’t.

The campaign not-so-subtly nudges you to take action. Donate. Shop. Go  hunting for one-of-a-kind treasures at Goodwill. It implores you to frequent Goodwill so that your items and cash can help with their mission of putting people back to work.

And it’s a sustainable story too, because…

  • By taking ALL of your donated items, Goodwill keeps thousands of tons of discarded stuff out of landfills and give them news lives with people who can really use it
  • If they don’t sell it, they’ll recycle it
  • The sale of your stuff goes to sustaining the training and employment of thousands of people
  • The community is sustained by the Good work of Goodwill

Think about the last time you were at a Goodwill either dropping off donations or shopping. What is the one word and the one item that best tells the story about your experience? For more ideas, you can tour the entire campaign here.

How Our Internal Green Conversation Using GreenNurture.com Became a National Topic in The Wall Street Journal

Park has initiated the "One Ream Per Person Per Year" challenge at Park&Co because of GreenNurture.com

Park has initiated the "One Ream Per Person Per Year" challenge at Park&Co because of GreenNurture.com

What started as an internal conversation about how we could become more sustainable in our small business has grown to be part of a national story in the Wall Street Journal. And we have Derrick Mains and GreenNuture.com to thank.

A couple of weeks ago, we deployed GreenNurture to help our agency become more sustainable. We were one of the first to adopt this new website/enterprise platform that helps companies large and small become more sustainable through micro-eco actions created out of upping the conversation about being “Green” within the company.

Our team at Park&Co have been using GreenNurture.com to share ideas on the little things we can do to reduce, reuse, and save around the office.

From our production manager: “I know I may look like a vampire but I don’t think the extra lamps are necessary all the time-especially in the morning.”

From our ACD: “Keep the thermostat a couple degrees higher in summer so people aren’t wearing sweaters at work on a 100+ degree day.”

From our bookkeeper: “We should take the recycling of the job jackets one step further to have our ultimate goal be “to be paperless.” We could store all necessary documentation on the server under a file of the job so that both the accounting and job folders could be viewed. Ultimately we could remove those file cabinets and replace them with a green hammock to catch up on “Z’s” for all the extra time we’ll have created.

From me: “What if we issued just one ream of paper per person per year for basic documents? And then if and when you needed a second ream, you would have to petition for one describing the merits of your need? Would this makes us all think twice about running something through our printers?”

If you haven’t yet checked out GreenNurture.com and what it can mean to your company relative to reducing waste, recycling, and saving money, it’s definitely worth about 20 minutes of your time. That’s all it takes to get your internal eco campaign up and running.

In the meantime, do you want to step up to the “One Ream Per Person Per Year” challenge? It truly monetizes a product that everyone views as a commodity. Think of the money + trees + paper + printer ink + printer power + the cost of recycling + the carbon footprint, you and your company will save just by reframing a ream of paper as something worth vastly more. Scarcity has a way of increasing the value of all items. Basic economics.

One final note: I’d like to give a big shout out to Aly Saxe at Ubiquity P.R. for turning our internal story of sustainability into a national one. Thanks Aly!