The Story of American Business: From the Pages of The New York Times
Nancy F. Koehn, Editor
Harvard Business Press (2009)

This volume provides a wealth of material that originally appeared in The New York Times from May 11, 1869 (“East and West,” an account by an unnamed correspondent of the celebration at Promontory Point when the railway first connected New York and California) until September 28, 2008 (“The Richest Man and How He Grew That Way,” Janet Maslin’s review of Snowball, Alice Schroeder’s biography of Warren Buffett). The material is carefully organized according to three major themes: the corporation, American business and the changing nature of work, and the defining moments in technology. As Koehn suggests, “Taken together, these aspects provide us a kind of wide-angle lens on some – though by no means all – of the most important individuals and events that shaped American business history and that, in turn, did so much to give form to our own time and our possibilities in it.”

Most readers will check out the Contents and then select articles of special interest to them. Others may prefer to proceed through one section to the next. Whatever the approach, the reading experience shares much in common with a situation in which a person begins to clear out an attic, cellar, garage or storage area and finds several boxes filled with clippings of articles from The New York Times. Some are about the rise of big business, the emergence of Wall Street, “merger mania,” major business leaders; other articles examine the changing nature of work such as the movement from farm to country and the emergence of labor unions; still others examine the “transportation revolution” (e.g. railroad, automobile, and commercial flight) and communication breakthroughs such as radio, television, and the Internet. There are at least some photographs such as one of a Northern Pacific locomotive in 1900 and another in which Henry Ford sits in his car next to a horse and buggy in 1933. However, the bulk of the material consists of narrative text.

Congratulations to Nancy F. Koehn on a brilliant achievement!

• The Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade
• Lollercoaster
• 50 More of Wikipedia’s Most Interesting Articles
• Bulls Escape The Set Of Tom Cruise’s New Movie In Spain
• Orange: Snowball
• Great Amateur Rap
• “Leaves of Grass” Trailer

Unusually, all three cats were in the mood for posing yesterday.  Here they are, in all their feline glory.

First to pose was Snowball.  This is especially unusual, as she’s incredibly camera-shy.  She tolerated me for ten minutes or so before stalking off to bug the crap out of her big brother.

Next was Eric.  He is most definitely not camera-shy, but he has the attention-span of a knat.  I’m trying to take a picture of Eric (and David!) every day, to document how he’s growing.

And here is Wily, the posiest poser of all.  He knew full well that I was taking all of these photos, but kept posing until I was done.

I love these cats to bits.  Any more need saying?

I was at the grocery store and saw that Betty Crocker has some seasonal mixes out. Apple Crisp, Snowballs, and Bon Bons. All you need is butter or water depending on the recipe, otherwise all of the ingredients are included. I find that for $4.99 that is quite a steal. Only a couple minutes between opening the box and the oven, so it serves as a great last minute dessert idea.

I have no idea where my boss is. I came late into work today expecting to see her, but so far – no sign of the elusive boss lady. So, after sitting here without actually doing work, I figured hey, why not look around thems internets? Looky what I found:

• Rom Houben was trapped in a coma for 23 years. Let me say that again, HE WAS TRAPPED IN A COMA FOR 23 YEARS!!! Doctors, please step up your game.
• I can’t believe rolling a snowball down a hill actually works
• Zomg these people are so tan and so hot!!! Try not to vomit
• NERD ALERT!: Star Wars Facebook Updates!
• Find out what your favorite Thanksgiving food says about you
• And finally, Paula Deen is hit by a flying ham. That sentence makes me laugh

Well that covers it for today’s edition. If you have anything awesome or hilarious to share, please leave it on the comments below and we’ll put it up! Until next time!

Click:

Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo

by Ketelsen 
 It starts for me about mid October~TimberPine is buzzing with PumpkinFest activities and I have the opportunity to stroll through the 120 acres of nursery, looking for inspiration…..for Christmas.  Yes..I start early, but it’s all in preparation of making something new, different, spunkier than last year. This round, I started with these 4 elements : Black Hill Spruce, Red Twig Dogwood, Birch Twigs, and White Pine.  From there…I let my imagination take me…changed things up a couple times and today, I’m somewhat satisfied with my creations.  I will most likely switch it up somewhere between here and Christmas. 

Start with the evergreen tips first and casually integrate the birch twigs.  Don’t think too hard about it.  A quick arrangement may look more natural…the look you’re going for. In a basket at the floor, I’ve carelessly placed the evergreen snipits and threw in a few ornaments. 

I found this “snowball” arrangement online atGainer’s Creek Crafts and thought it would look great in a bowl mixed with White Pine sprigs. 

This is really simple..but carries on the evergreen feel. 

Something a little different…I took a sumac branch, painted it white, stuck it in a container with bark mulch to stabilize.

Bottom line: don’t be afraid to try something different this year.  Take a stroll in nature’s garden to find some inspiration and bring a snipit of it back to your home.

For a Saturday, today started pretty early.  Just about as early as it does on a week day.  Why you ask?  Well – we had to drive down to DCA to drop Nick off to catch a flight to Portland (OR, not ME) for the SuperComputing conference.  I think that he was volunteered to go and set up because he’s done it before, which means he had to leave a day or two before the conference actually starts.  What would any unintentional morning person do when this task was done and I was back home by 7:15AM?  Sieze the day?  Absolutely not.  I went back to bed.  You see, I’m not really a morning person.  I just play one Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

I think Cashew wished that I had continued sleeping, even when I did roll out of bed for really at oh, 11AM – glorious 11AM.  Pinot and I made it outside for a longer-ish walk.  Well, longer-ish than we have the past couple of days in the rain.  It’s amazing how it seems like not so long ago, all the leaves had changed and it was all so colorful outside, and now the leaves are mostly on the ground.  It just looks like winter is coming, which does make sense given that it’s mid November.  It was nice to have a nice day today though, overall

Feel free to skip this next paragraph if you aren’t into my ramblings on fitness.

–(begin ramblings)—-

So my big goal for today was to get my long run for NEXT week out of the way today (9 miles) and to do my long run for this week next week (5 miles) because next week I’m heading to Philly with some cool people to watch this ocean of awesome run a marathon, and his counterpart (the lake of awesome?  the coral reef of cool?  — that girl — ) run the half.  Should be good times, and the almost Italian bella and I want to get there before it gets too late!  Which means, probably better for me to have a shorter run next weekend.  No problemo. I had it all set.  Had my route planned and entrusted to Minges, my counterpart in having someone know where I was going and when I should be back.  I should mention – yep, the 9 miles for today – it’s a mere 2 miles more than last weekend, but in the overall line up of me running - I ran somewhere between 9-10 miles once.  The first time I attempted to train for a marathon.  6 years ago.  And at that point, I decided that 9-10 miles was more than enough and I stopped right after that.  Course, I was younger then, and more into going out all the time.  That may have been a factor.  Maybe.  Anyway – so while I kept telling myself that it was only an extra 2 miles – really, this makes it up on the board of ‘runs that I have done that are quasi long’.  And so I set off on the Capitol Crescent Trail and ran all the way down to Melanie’s house.  I put-put, not speedy at all, but I was happy to have done all 9 (!) and to have done it faster than 11min/miles average.  Most, in fact, were shorter time wise, but the last 2 killed me.  I’m blaming it on the stop and go of being in the city.  Today I also realized that lifting weights on Fridays before the long runs tires me out – I waited on the lifting this week and todays run was actually easier than last week in that sense.  My biggest complaint from today is that my heart rate monitor strap attacked me.  Don’t ask.  Special thanks to Mel, JJ and Snowy for not minding that I stunk when I did make it to their place to get some water. 

—(end ramblings)—

So for those of you that skipped that, around 3:15 I was feeling pretty good because I had just run 9 miles from Bethesda down into the heart of DC.  Woohoo!  And what, you may ask, would any self-declared Husker fan who isn’t actually from Nebraska but loves the team just as much – what would that gal do when it is 3:15 and she’s downtown and parked in Bethesda but kick-off is at 3:30?  Well – hop on the metro to get back home to the game of course!  I even ran from the Bethesda metro exit to my parking spot.  (I guess I had some energy left after the long run.)  Never mind that all my layers were a bit caked with sweat.  And – when not driving of course – take a sneak peak at her sports app to see how the team is doing.  When I got home, I am happy to report, we were up 7-0 and I’d only missed the 1st quarter. The game – while it ended well – ended up being a good game to watch.  I’m glad that we won (Go Big Red!)   I’m also glad that I had dried off by the time the game had ended.   (yes, I am gross.  it’s the weekend.  priorities people.)

So at this point – it’s like 6:50 PM.  Crazy how quickly Saturdays go by, isn’t it?  If you read and were able to make sense of my fitness ramblings above, you may have noticed that in passing, I mentioned that I had moved my Friday weight routine to Saturday this week.  And so, with the game over and won, and in a pretty chipper mood, I tackled my weight workout.  Which was easy and painless.  And once that was over, finally, sweet, sweet shower.  And at that point, I realized that I should probably eat dinner.  This is beginning to sound like “If you give a mouse a cookie”, isn’t it?

So where, do you ask, does the effects of location come into all of this?  Well – here is my dilemna.  It is 9PM.   Friends are downtown on the hill, and have been since about 3 this afternoon.  I want to go out.  However -  capitol hill is a good hour drive (including parking).  Or – I could metro, but that would be a 30 min drive to Bethesda, followed by another half hour metro to the hill.  With the ‘kids’ at home, there is no option of going out and crashing with friends downtown, which means that going out would be a fairly dry affair.  And everyone has a pretty good (6 hour) head start.  At this point, I made the insane decision to stay in this evening.  If folks had been in Bethesda even?  Out in a second.  So, this evening, excuse or not – I’m upset that we live in Gaithersburg, and that Gaithersburg is not a cool trendy suburb of DC, wedged between Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle.  I may even settle for it being walkable from our place to a metro stop, but nope, that too is too much to ask.  Silly housing prices dropping so we are stuck here infinately.

Now – I have a feeling that some may say that strait up, I am being completely anti-social, and that I should just suck it up and go out.  If Nick were home, I am almost 100% sure that we would have.  Maybe Nick is more social than I am, but I don’t think so because I actually do want to go out.  I just don’t want to drive an hour each way to do it.  Maybe I’m lazy.  Maybe I’m just missing the yin to my yang (while I say – it’s so far away! Nick says ‘lets go!’ and I groan but I go, and it’s good.  Not because he talked me into it, but because he gets that it’s far away and he doesn’t let it bother him and that in turn helps me to get past it.  And having some companionship for the long long drive there and back isn’t so bad either.   I think that goes for both of us, though I am usually the one falling asleep on the way back.)

And so – the ladies of the house are planning on having mushroom leek risotto with some Boordy apple wine for dinner while watching some girly movies until all hours of the morning.  After I check a few more football scores.

The verbiage in this post made up for a weeks worth of minimalism.  Hope it kept you entertained.  Feel free to chime in on my dilemna – am I anti-social, or just location deprived?  You be the judge.

I, quiet possibly, may be the last person who has yet to finish reading The Snowball by Alice Schroeder, otherwise summarized as Warren Buffet and the Business of Life. The book’s publication in 2008 was well-timed, and with the economy collapsing all around us, who wouldn’t want to scrape a few golden nuggets of wisdom from the “sage of Omaha” as Warren Buffet came to be known. Unsurprisingly, The Snowball shot up The New York Times Bestseller list to #1 as fast as the banking system came crashing down in that domino-effect metaphor so often used in the media. That’s the success formula of a bestseller: celebrity + timeliness, with one often outweighing the other.

While I am only a few hundred pages in (the book is close to 1,000 pages long!), a paragraph in its very beginning caught my eye. It goes something like this:

“Most of the press people liked Buffet, who went out of his way not to be disliked by anyone. He also intrigued them. His public image was that of a simple man, and he seemed genuine. Yet he lived a complicated life. He owned five homes but occupied only two of them. Somehow he wound up having, in effect, two wives. He spoke in homely aphorisms with a kindly twinkle in his eye and had a notably loyal group of friends, yet along the way he had earned a reputation as a tough, even icy dealmaker. He seemed to shun publicity yet managed to attract more of it than almost any other businessman on earth. He jetted around the country in a G-IV, often attended celebrity events, and had many famous friends, yet said that he preferred Omaha, hamburgers, and thrift. He spoke of his success as being based on a few simple investing ideas and tap-dancing to work with enthusiasm every day, but if that was so, why had nobody else been able to replicate it?”

So why has no one been able to replicate it? A question I would ask you, but also something I keep thinking about as I read the book.

One of the answers that I keep mulling over can be summed up in one word: Patience. Warren Buffet is patient in waiting for cheap to become really cheap, in going through financial statements line by line, in hoarding cash until “really cheap” becomes even cheaper. As our world spins faster and faster, it feels like our attention spans become shorter and shorter. We tweet in 140 words, incessantly check Facebook updates, jump from blog to blog, all of which test our patience to sit for a few hours and read a 1,000 page book or sit patiently on the sidelines as the rest of the world invests in mortgages backed by layers of nothing.

If you had the patience to read to the end of this blog entry, thank you. I hope to do the same for you.

To celebrate this holiday season we would like to offer everyone our Russian Cookies 10 + 1 Promo. For every order of 10 boxes of Russian Cookies (whether single or assorted flavors), you get one box (single flavor of your choice) free. This promo is good until December 31, 2009.

Please check out our Products Page and take your pick.

As every professional snowball warrior knows, it’s the extremities you need to keep warm.  Anything more and you may get overheated.

Buy Cheap Department 56 Snowbaby Snowball Ornament

Buy Low Price From Here Now

…….

Readmore

Technical Details

- Bisque
See more technical details

Images Product

Buy Department 56 Snowbaby Snowball Ornament Now

Hi all! Nice you are back. Just a few pics today, because I´m so busy in preparing our new theme “La vie en rose” which is starting on saturday. Sorry for that.

Snowballs are piled up. Crochet stars are getting more and more

No rest for the weary this Friday.  Up and at ‘em  early as usual.  Was pretty excited to come home for lunch (I love getting out earlier on Fridays!) because the cauliflower pasta leftovers from last night were waiting for me in the fridge.  Pinot & I set out to meet Melanie & Snowball at the Wheaton Dog Park this afternoon.  It was Snowy’s first time, and she handled herself pretty well, but there was definitely a point when you could just see her thinking ‘I’m too old for these young pups to be running around at me’ and began hiding under the table/on-in Melanie’s purse.  At that point, we decided to go for a walk.

Pinot & Snowball eagerly await Melanie's return from el bano

It was a nice afternoon for a walk, and hopefully the pups were very tired out as we all had a big evening planned, courtesy of Doug, beginning with Korean BBQ in Annandale at Honey Pig!  Yes, you will notice that this is a big steaming plate of meat.  I did not eat it all by myself, I promise.  Melanie stuck to her guns, but my lack of officially declaring to be veg and Nick’s convincing argument that I didn’t order it and it just would go to waste (Ok I admit it – with 23 people at dinner, I was lazy and didn’t want to make a big deal out of ordering noodles) – alas, yummy food.  (In a random side note, there were a couple articles – one and two -today that got me to thinking about the food stuff.  It’s enough to make your brain explode if you think about it too much.)

After dinner, we all packed up and moved over a few blocks to a private room for kareoke!  Never had a private kareoke room before, and the experience was a lot more fun and less nerve wracking than my last kareoke experience with Kamy in Alabama all those years ago.  Crooning out hits considered oldies, to show tunes, to today’s top 40 – the hours flew by and we rolled back into the house a bit before 3AM.  Great night!