family, missions, Gray: welcome home, Gray … awesome pictures from Lesotho!
family: I am blessed with a sister.
Sisters can help teenagers fend off ex-boyfriends, mean gossip and, apparently, depression.Having a sister protects teens “from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful,” according to a study in this weeks Journal of Family Psychology.Researchers from Brigham Young University studied 395 Seattle families with two or more children, including at least one child age 10 to 14. They found that affectionate siblings have a positive influence on each other no matter their age, gender or how many years apart they are in age.Sisters promote behaviors such as kindness and generosity and protect against delinquency and depression, says Laura Padilla-Walker, an assistant professor in BYUs School of Family Life.And having a sister — rather than a brother — appears to help prevent depression, maybe because girls are better at talking about problems, Padilla-Walker says.
via http://www.suntimes.com/health/2568854,CST-NWS-sisters05.article
food – Southern: I consider myself pretty Southern. I never had a fried green tomato until I was 20-something. And now they call it comfort food … hmmm. Southern comfort food at my house was fried chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, chicken pot pie, turkey hash and turkey Tetrazzini … no fried green tomatoes …
Crisp and tangy, fried green tomatoes are the ultimate Southern comfort food.
…
Don’t be tempted to eat them right away after cooking. The tomatoes will be hot inside due to the water trapped within. Instead take this time to stack up one of Callaghan’s signature BL-GREEN-Ts. Toast one side of the bread, turn some chopped greens such as arugula, basil, or tarragon into Duke’s mayo, and use a good smokehouse bacon. The sandwich has become so popular at Acme, the chef says, that one of his regular brunch customers got a tattoo of it. “Bloody Marys and bacon fat do strange things to people, I guess.”
via Slices of Heaven.
The South: Back to School … today … August 5 … no way …
Students in Cobb and Douglas counties and the city of Buford go back to school Thursday amid scorching conditions that in some cases have prompted changes in school system protocol.
The Cobb County School District, for instance, is encouraging students to bring bottled water on their morning and afternoon bus rides. The district expects to maintain that policy through September.
via Heat forces changes as kids go back to school | ajc.com.
Charlotte: NASCAR and wrestling … what a great town! 🙂
Before Charlotte became the center of NASCAR, it was home to a different breed of sport: professional wrestling.
From the first televised matches in the 1960s to the reign of Ric Flair’s elite “Four Horsemen” wrestling team through the late-1980s, Charlotte served as the Mid-Atlantic center stage for the bone-breaking, over-the-top world of professional wrestling.
“It was a blast. The wrestling business was on its first real wave at that time,” said former “Four Horsemen” team member Tully Blanchard, referring to wrestling’s peak in the late 1980s.
This weekend, the NWA Wrestling Legends Fanfest at the Hilton Charlotte University Place is taking Charlotte back to those glory days, starting with a free barbecue with the voice of WWE’s Monday Night Raw, Jim “J.R.” Ross.
Event organizer Greg Price said the convention, which runs through Sunday, promises to be a “wrestling fan’s heaven” complete with chances to meet more than a hundred of the sport’s most legendary athletes. Price expects more than 1,000 visitors this year.
Blanchard, now 64, said for him the weekend is about getting out of character and in touch with fans.
“Twenty-five or 20 years after the fact, it is neat to hear the impact of what you did that touched people, that entertained people,” Blanchard said.
Tom “Tommy Angel” Barrett, who wrestled in the 1980s, said the event got its start when promoters started asking legendary wrestlers to make appearances at contemporary matches.
“The response was tremendous,” he said. “They decided to try to round these guys up in one place.”
Price said the event’s popularity has grown steadily since its start in 2004. He said he’s seen fans from 44 states and four foreign countries, including Japan.
Blanchard said it makes sense for Charlotte to be the center of a wrestling convention.
“Charlotte was always the hotbed of the Mid-Atlantic area,” he said.
via Gathering recalls Charlotte’s headlock on wrestling world – CharlotteObserver.com.
culture, marketing: the Martha Stewart of the South … never heard of him.
Still, Mr. Smith might well be the most famous tastemaker you’ve never heard of. The son of a working-class widow, he grew up with 4-H chickens and a job in the family shrub shop, then managed to turn himself into the Martha Stewart of the South.
via P. Allen Smith, Tastemaker and Garden Guru – NYTimes.com.
food: LYCHEES! We loved them in China. I will look for them at our markets.
Rambutans belong to the same family, Sapindaceae, as lychees and longans. Peeled, the three fruits are hard to differentiate. Unpeeled, lychees resemble rambutans without the hair, as do longans, which are smaller, green and also hairless. If I had been introduced to this fruit family with the tentacle-free lychee or longan, the experience might have been less intimidating.
Of these three, lychees are the most easily found in the United States. Though native to southern China, where they have been cultivated for 2,000 years, lychees are grown in the United States as well as throughout Asia, Africa, Australia, parts of South America and Central America.
via Cracking The Lychee ‘Nut’ : NPR.
Great Recession, noblesse oblige: Guess who wasn’t invited to dinner? But a noble gesture by those who have made this commitment.
On Wednesday, Mr. Buffett announced that 40 of America’s wealthiest individuals and families, from former Citigroup Inc. leader Sandy Weill to hotel mogul Barron Hilton, have signed the “Giving Pledge.”Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates in June had asked the individuals and families to publicly commit to give away at least half of their wealth within their lifetimes or after their deaths.The pledge stemmed from a series of dinners the two men held for the nation’s billionaires over the past year to discuss the effects of the recession on philanthropy.
via Larry Ellison, George Lucas Join Billionaires in Buffett-Gates Charity Pledge – WSJ.com.
children, games, oral history: What’s your best memory from a childhood “game”?
We suspected this would be the last time they’d ever play “Truth or Dare,” too.
You just can’t win it.
And yet, as we watched the Girl Scouts shriek and hug each other in the water, I thought about the one saving grace of this barbaric game. It wasn’t The Mange that mattered, but joining forces with my friends in the face of the very fear we’d created. It wasn’t Bowzer, either, but hanging onto my cousin in the throes of our self-made terror and humiliation. Intense situations can make for good bonding. It’s just that good bonding is sometimes born out of really bad ideas.
via The Naked Reality Of ‘Truth Or Dare’ : NPR.
places, art, graffitti, Rome: Video – Graffiti Plagues Omnia Roma – WSJ.com.
Great Recession, real estate, Chicago:
The sale of the Chicago office tower at 300 North LaSalle St. for a record price of $655 million has left a number of real-estate professionals rubbing their eyes.
The record price for the Chicago office tower at 300 North LaSalle Street in a weak office-leasing market requires an explanation.
Like most cities, Chicago is suffering from a weak office-leasing market. The city’s vacancy rate at the end of the second quarter was 18.5%, up from 17.4% during the same period last year, and effective rents have been on a downward spiral for more than a year, according to Reis Inc.
But last week, KBS, a Newport Beach, Calif., real-estate company, purchased the 1.3 million square foot office building overlooking the Chicago River through an unlisted real-estate investment trust for about $500 a square foot. That is the most ever paid for a Chicago office building on a square-foot basis, according to Real Capital Analytics. By comparison, the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the U.S., sold for about $840 million in 2004, or $244 a square foot.
So what gives?
The answer is that in the current global economy, there is a widening valuation gap in commercial real estate between office buildings with a lot of vacancy and those that are close to fully leased with financially strong tenants. Many landlords with high vacancy rates are watching the value of their buildings fall with declining rent and the growing difficulty in filing space.
But 300 North LaSalle isn’t such a building. Rather, Houston-based Hines, which completed its development last year, succeeded in leasing 93% of its space for long periods. Chicago’s largest law firm, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, takes up more than 600,000 square feet as its largest tenant.
Investors today are looking at the steady incomes from such buildings almost like they would bond yields. And with rates on Treasury bonds hovering near historic lows, these office-building yields are looking increasingly attractive.
via PROPERTY REPORT: Chicago Sale Sets Records – WSJ.com.
professionalism: One of my favorite academic topics … maybe because one of my favorite college classes was a seminar entitled “Darwinism and the Emergence of Professions.”
Merriam-Webster gives us a bit more of a clue in the last part of the first definition:
1 a : of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession b : engaged in one of the learned professions c (1) : characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession (2) : exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace
OK now we’re getting somewhere. Courteous and conscientious is something I can get my head around (although “generally businesslike” is a bit vague…). Googling “professional behavior” gets you a variety of opinions on the matter ranging from “conduct appropriate to your workplace” to “don’t lie, spit, swear or steal”.
A thorough analysis of what is meant in the U.S. by “professional behavior” can be found on the Grovewell, LLC site here. But at the end of the day for me, professionalism boils down to a single concept introduced to me by my parents when I was about 10. It goes like this:
Treat others as you would like to be treated and you will always be invited back.
The first half is the good old golden rule and it’s still the most practical guidance I have found for professional behavior. In any situation I put myself in the role of my peers, subordinates, clients, vendors or managers and visualize how my actions will be perceived. If I don’t like the result, I find a better way. And my goal is always the second half – to be someone that others want to work with. There is no better measure of success as a professional than to have your employer be sorry to see you go and happy to have you return if the opportunity exists.
What are your benchmarks for professionalism? We’ve all seen unprofessional behavior (like pornography – we know it when we see it…) but if you have great ideas or resources for workplace behavior that gets you invited back, please share!
via A Professional What? « Survive Your Promotion!.
colleges, football, Alabama: What can I say, my mamma went to ‘Bama! RTR … YouTube – New Alabama Football 2010 Intro.
colleges, followup, UGA: Like I said Princeton Review’s ranking of the best party school benefits no one …
Political Cartoons from Mike Luckovich.
We have a feeling Siskel and Ebert would have given these wedding invitations two thumbs up.
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