Storytelling

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A fellow poster on a chat service had a very important problem that he was asking for help solving.  His son, an adult, is developmentally disabled and the programs that the family has come to rely on to create for him something like a normal life were being slashed.  When this poster tried to explain the situation to officials and others who might help, their eyes glazed over and they lost interest.  What can he do?

The answer was a simple one:  he had to learn how to tell a story.  He had to make the people listening want to care and get involved.

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Jet Stream

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When in doubt, you can always talk about the weather in polite Minnesota conversation. Days like today, when we are expected to have a foot of snow and Olympic Ice Dancing on the roads, it’s a topic you can count on.  It’s not controversial but it provides a nearly endless supply of entertainment much like driving a flaming bus through a wall of televisions, at least in the sense that it’s likely to be lethal.

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Great Recession? Great Denial

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What is the best way to describe our economic situation?  If you look at the popular press, the term that is gaining  truck lately is “Great Recession”, a term that refers to the worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929-1937.  But isn’t a really bad Recession just one way of defining a “Depression”?   Well, maybe, but that would involve using that dreaded “D word”.  That kind of cowardice, the inability to call the situation what it is, lies at the heart of why we aren’t capable of dealing with it properly – which is why it continues to get worse.

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Patently Absurd

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The economy continues to lumber along, perhaps turning a corner without actually creating much in the way of new jobs.  We never know just where we stand until it’s in our rearview mirror..  One thing that has perked up lately is talk about innovation as a way out of the mess we’re in.  Obama is pitching $30B for small business lending on the grounds that this is where innovation, and thus jobs, are created.  So far, so good.  But the spirit of innovation in the USofA needs a lot more than that if it is going to be the engine of new growth and new jobs.

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