It’s the Simple Stuff

A Facebook post by a work colleague, Stephen T, over the weekend, in which he extolled the virtues of a weekend of simple pleasures including time camping with his daughter, wife, grandson and dogs, a ride on his motorcycle, and a glass of wine got me thinking about how much I also enjoy the simple things. I think this desire to enjoy simplicity is often driven by the world we live in – and the place. The world has become much faster – there is no denying it. What used to take days takes minutes. What used to take hours, now takes seconds. What used to take minutes happened instantly. Case in point – the Amanda Knox verdict – it happened in Italy this afternoon. We knew about it in the US seconds later. The “news alert” was zapped to my iPhone via text alert. Fast.

Anyway, not what this post is about. What it is about are simple things that I love. Last night we had a simple dinner. It was FANTASTIC. Chicken roasted on the grill, with baked potatoes, steamed broccolini, french bread and a glass of wine. The chicken was prepared as simple as it gets – a little olive oil rubbed on the skin, a generous sprinkle of salt inside and out, a good grind of pepper over the skin, and then cooked old-school style on my charcoal Weber grill. SIMPLE.

Other simple pleasures I love? A beer, enjoyed standing in the back yard on a Sunday afternoon after doing some yard work. Waxing the car by hand. A walk with the dog. Sitting and playing my guitar. A drink with a good pal: last evening, after 9:30, I floated over to my pal GASHM’s house and he and I enjoyed a bourbon on the rocks while sitting by the outdoor firepit, just chatting.

Time spent with Robin of course is high on the list, but our favorite times are always just simple. Reading in bed. Watching TV together. Going grocery shopping together. Going for a walk together. Farm stands and farmers markets (I could do a whole post on just that one!) – going, picking out fresh stuff for dinner and enjoying a cup of coffee while we enjoy the time together.

In food, while I love cooking exotic and complex things, it is the simple stuff, like the chicken from last night that jazzes me. I love perfecting the simple. A perfectly cooked medium rare steak. A proper burger. A perfectly cooked fried egg where the yolk is hot but still runny, but the whites are firm. A hot dog. A proper martini. Hot chocolate made with milk and Hershey’s syrup. Popcorn, not cooked in a microwave, but in a pan on the stove. Simple stuff.

I know this is starting to read like the song “Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and all that. But seriously, in this tech-driven, instantaneous, real time, 24x7x365, debit card, Amazon.com next day delivery, Instant Queue, Xfinity world of ours, isn’t it a treat to put down the smart phone, iPad, Android, PC, Mac, turbocharged, direct-injected stuff and enjoy the basics? There’s such a push at all times to just “go and do” … gotta go do things, gotta go places to do them, etc. Yeesh! How about “Don’t go. Don’t do.” instead?

So, after you read this, of course, sign off the tech. Put aside the smart phone and the iPad, clip the leash on the dog and go for a walk. Give a good friend a call and go have a beer. Cook something for dinner that didn’t come in a package, and use only salt and pepper to season it. Enjoy a glass of wine, or a cold beer, or a hot cup of tea. Hold hands with your loved one. Make chocolate chip cookies. Dunk one in a cold glass of milk.

And revel in the simplicity of it.

As you were,

Stew

Tribute to Steve Jobs

About 2 /2 weeks ago, I got an iPad2. It, unfortunately, coincided accidentally, with Steve Jobs’ announcement that he was stepping down from Apple as the CEO. Clearly a sad moment as not only is he a great man and a transforming force in business but it is also sad to know that someone’s dad, husband, best friend, etc. is dying way too young of a terrible disease. Having lost my dad when I was only 30 and he was only 60, that news hit too close to home. I remember having to go to Maytag Dairy Farms to deliver the news of my dad’s diagnosis to his staff, and that for the time being, he would not be coming back to the office. The tears that staff shed were very real, and that was a very tough day.

So I decided that day that I got the Steve Jobs news, that I’d honor him by writing a blog post about him and my viewpoints of his products’ transforming impact on our world, by writing a post on my iPad. It has taken me about 2 1/2 weeks to become somewhat proficient at typing on this thing, although I do have to say that it is a very Sysiphis-like exercise. For every five or six words I type, I have to correct probably three of them. Nonetheless this post was written entirely using native touchscreen keyboard on my iPad. As my friend Collin, at work has on his iPhone’s email signature, paraphrased: Please abuse any hippos. Sent from hi iPad.

Even though my friend “1.1” (GASHM’s wife), would find this hard to believe, I was a very early adopter and fan of the Apple brand ages ago – like 1978. Back then my dad, as CEO/President of Maytag Dairy Farms in Iowa, came home from work one day to tell me that his “boss” – the man that owned the Dairy Farms, Fritz Maytag, had called him to say that he was going to send him a new computer – one of those “Apple” computers from that new company in San Francisco. For my beer swilling friends, yes, this is the same Fritz Maytag that is widely regarded as the father of the craft brewing/microbrewery movement as the founder/owner if Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, maker of Anchor Steam beer.

Fritz, by benefit of having been born very well, and being a good businessman besides, had invested in this little startup called Apple, and was friends with young Mr, Jobs and his sidekick Steve Wozniak, Fritz had bought a few Apple IIs and sent my dad one to use for the business,

For those that haven’t seen an Apple II, it was pretty ingenious. In a package about the size of an IBM Selectric typewriter, it was the first truly “micro” computer. It was built with a pop off cover that you could open to install push-in expansion cards for things like memory, floppy drives, tape drives, monitor video, modems, etc. All of which were external boxes around it. It really was pretty ingenious, even though by today’s standards, an iPod shuffle has more processing power, and all those cables and boxes made it pretty kludgey.

My dad’s Apple II used a 10-inch black and white TV as a monitor, had a dual external floppy drive, and a modem, He used it to run Visi Calc, the fossil DNA of which still can be found in Microsoft Excel. He kept the Dairy Farms’ books on it, and used the scorching 300 baud speed of the modem to connect to Fritz’s Apple II in San Francisco and pass the spreadsheet files back and forth. They also had a rudimentary database program that they dabbled with, and then in addition, my dad had a game called Apple Adventure that my mom would play. It was the original “situation” game and the interface was simply words. “You are standing on a road at the edge of a misty forest…”. My mom was obsessed with that game.

Fast forward a few years and I suddenly became immersed in the Apple brand. I was a Junior at University of Iowa, and was working at Team Electonics in the Sycamore Mall and we were an Apple dealership. At the time the Apple II and Apple III were the go to products, and Apple introduced the Apple IIc. This was touted as the first “portable” computeer. It was a repackaged Apple II with a built-in floppy drive, embedded modem and video card, etc. It wasn’t upgradable, but you could put it in a bag and lug it somewhere, it really was the first laptop. Of course it didn’t have a built-in monitor, which was external. I managed to win a IIc in a sales contest. I bought a daisy-wheel printer for it and used it for word processing. As a journalism major, it was transforming – no more typing articles and papers on a typewriter. I haven’t used one since,

While I was there at Team, Apple launched the Macintosh. January 1984. Remember the Superbowl ad? That computer was again transforming – mouses, icons, graphic user interfaces, drop down menus, icons, trash cans, windows, etc., every bit of our modern computer interfaces that we still use today were part of the original Mac experience. Talk about transforming!! It is hard to estimate the impact of that, I could have bought one for as little as $700 but since I already had the IIc, I didn’t. Still regret that decision!

[Does anyone else but me notice that the girl in this ad is dressed like a Hooters waitress?]

That was really the start of Apple’s transforming of our world. Every major category of personal technology we use today was either invented by or transformed by Steve Jobs and Apple. Personal music was sort of invented by Sony with the Walkman, but it was the IPod that kicked it to the level it is today. The first “smartphones” were the Blackberry prod
ucts, but the iPhone defined the category. And the iPad drives the tablet revolution.The world’s techies and pundits are wondering “what could be the next transforming revolution from Apple and Steve Jobs?”. What I hope he has left behind is a culture of “how could we think differently”. Because that, among every other achievement, is exactly what Steve Jobs did. He thought differently. It is a challenge I try to give myself every day.

 Transform your thinking, transform your world.

Thanks Steve Jobs!
As you were,

Stew

(full disclosure: the photos and media in this were added after I got done typing this on my iPad. But I did manage to type the whole thing on my iPad!)

Small Town People

Our recent trip to Cancun included joining some great friends we met at the same resort in 2007.  These folks are just great people, and when we tell the story of them, people find it hard to believe we found anything to talk about.  These friends are Keary and Lisa from a small town in Alabama, Rainsville.  When I say they live in a one-stoplight town, I mean, they live in a ONE stoplight town.  Although we learned on the trip that the town recently put in a second one outside the the school.

They brought along with them a group of their friends all from same area in Alabama.  Here we are, the big city Chicago folks embedded with the small town crew.  And after a week with these folks, we had plans made to join them in their small town in Alabama in May.  I cannot wait.  I want to see them, and I want to dip myself in all that small town goodness.

Most folks that know me, know I grew up in Newton IA.  However, I’ve lived in the Chicago area now for more than 25 years.  On Chicago-scale, that’s a small town.  On small town scale, well, it is a big town – the bigger town that tends to be the county seat (it is), employment center, etc. that is characteristic of rural counties all over America.  But still small town America.  And the more time I spend in suburbia in Chicago and observing people that have it great yet complain about everything, I realize just how resilient people that live in small towns are and must be.

Our oldest son Joel had his first real exposure to small town America this past year – he roomed with a great guy from Greenup IL, Tyler.  Greenup is also a one stoplight town, but as Joel learned when he visited recently, Greenup’s stoplight isn’t even a real stoplight – just a red blinker.  He visited there in late July and loved every minute of the small town life.  They played golf on what passes for a golf course there – they affectionately call it “cow pasture golf” – ain’t no bentgrass to be found there unless some animal took a nap on it!  They went to the local pizza joint, Panks.  Tyler’s folks threw a pool party while he was there, and it seemed like the whole town stopped by for a beer, a snack and a soak.  His observations:  Beautiful little town.  Lots of pride in every little thing.  Great people.  He got what I love about small towns.

After a week of observing our friends from Alabama, I was struck by how resilient they are, and how resourceful they are.  Employment opportunities are scarce there, but they still get by doing things that give them a living and an enjoyable lifestyle.  By and large, when you live in an area like that, you either own a small business or work for one,  you work for the municipal services in town. Often, all of the above.  Keary and Lisa own one of their town’s two funeral homes and are the funeral directors there.  Brian and Leslie own two small businesses – Brian owns a DJ/Karaoke business and Leslie owns a small resale/consignment clothing store.  Chris/Coach is the local high school football coach, and his wife Sharon is a nurse.  Coach supplements their income by playing in a bar band.  Jerry works for the local John Deere dealership and his wife Tammy is the clerk of court in their town.  I heard no complaints at all about work from any of them while we were there.  Work is, well, the means to which they seek to live their lives, and these people don’t seem to be either defined by their work nor defined by attaining material needs.  Refreshing after living in the affluent, overly-money-conscious suburbs we live in where people are often defined by what they do and what they have.  Not by who they are.  Fantastic people, all of them.

They are resilient in the face of adversity as well.  Their county and their town was hit badly by the run of tornadoes that killed dozens in Alabama this summer – 30 people died in their county alone.  Two of the couples on the trip have recently had to take in and most likely will keep permanently, young children of family members who by either tragedy or other circumstances have been left without parents to care for them.  They didn’t dwell on it, they just did it.  It’s what they do.  Do they worry about it?  Yes.  Complain?  No.

My own small town has had its share of trials as well – several years ago, Maytag company was sold to Whirlpool, killing off the local Maytag plant and wiping out a 500-person executive operation there.  Total job loss was close to 3000., in a town of 12,000.   That had ripple effects on every business in town – from small businesses that made their living selling things to Maytag, to the dentists and doctors, the lawyers, the dry cleaners, car dealers and repair, even Domino’s pizza felt the pinch.  The town has responded and is rebounding.  A group of investors in town got together, did research and discovered an untapped demand for a world-class auto racing facility – they did the job and now IndyCar, and the NASCAR series run races there.  Who’d have thought that folks like the Andrettis, the Penskes, Rick Hendricks, etc., let alone the national news media, would descend on Newton each summer and go racing.  Certainly not me.  Speaking to friends of mine and friends of my mom, none of these folks would trade their small town for life in the big city.

Being with my new friends from tiny Rainsville, AL, reminded me of John Mellencamp’s song, Small Town.

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be

As you were,

Stew

The crew:

From left – Tammy and Jerry, me and Robin, Leslie and Brian, Coach Chris and Sharon, Keary and Lisa