Yesterday, I shared the following with the OC Register, which is currently mapping coyote and bobcat sightings throughout Orange County.
"I live in Aliso Viejo and every evening my wife and I walk along Pacific Park between the 73 and Wood Canyon. On the evening of October 6, 2009, at about 6:00 PM, we saw a full-sized adult bobcat come out of the brush and run across the street about fifty feet ahead of us, in essence, making its way up the hill from out of our neighborhood. We continued on our path on the sidewalk, and sure enough, at the point at which the cat had crossed the street, he was sitting on his hind legs about fifteen feet up the hill on one of the man-made ledges, looking down at us. I was really amazed at how casual the cat was with us being that close. I kept a close eye on him and he met my gaze for about three seconds before looking away. Through our entire encounter, he was as aloof as a neighborhood house cat."
Showing posts with label Teresa Savastano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teresa Savastano. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Monday, November 14, 2005
Bibendum, The Michelin Man...
We all know him and just about all of us love him, whether or not we’ve ever purchased his tires, but how much do we really know about the Michelin Man?
I hadn’t given him much thought until my wife pointed out that the Michelin tires I bought a few months back had the Michelin Man right on the sidewall. Then, just a few weeks ago, there was an article about him in Fortune Magazine, so I just had to read it.
His name his Bibendum, which is a Latin gerundive which means, "Drinking to be done." To understand why they gave him a name synonymous with drinking, you must remember that 107 years ago, only wealthy well-to-do’s could afford cars and drinking and driving wasn’t really frowned upon yet.
Though he has become such a lasting icon, Bibendum came from pretty simple beginnings. Bibendum first came to the mind of Edouard Michelin when he and his brother Andres were at an auto expo in Lyon in 1894 and Edouard commented that some stacks of tires in a row looked like a line-up of tire men...all you had to do was add the arms.
It was just four years later in 1898 that Bibendum appeared in his first Michelin ad, a poster that depicted him as being so tough that he was eating broken glass.
Later in 1898, Bibendum was depicted as having just triumphed over two other tire men in a fight who looked notably like John Boyd Dunlop and the then-chief of Continental Tire.
Bibendum as a mascot made his debut in Paris in 1898 as well when an actor was paid to stand behind a cardboard cut-out of Bibendum at a cycle show to entertain the show’s patrons.
Bibendum was so popular an attraction at the show that Michelin’s rivals started shoving patrons, trying to get them away from the Michelin exhibit, and police had to be called in to restrain them.
It might seem a little much, but early tire manufacturing was a very competitive business that in those days catered only to the folks who were affluent enough to be able to afford motorized, wheeled transportation.
The industry's competitiveness even sparked a series of Bibendum ads in the early 1900s that had him standing in triumph, sword-in-hand, over fields of battered and bloodied tire men, crying out for mercy.
Then, in 1914, we finally saw the makings of the Bibendum of today when he appeared in an ad as a middle-aged good samaritan driver, cigar-in-mouth, lending a fellow motorist his best tire from his mid-section.
Today, you can catch the Michelin Man at auto expos and trade shows. Due to the risk of liability in today’s world, the actor inside Bibendum is under strict instructions not to say anything. Bibendum will take a picture with you, but he won’t put his arm around you, and keep his hands visible in front of him at all times. They’ve kept his name, but you won’t see today’s Bibendum bibending anymore...
I hadn’t given him much thought until my wife pointed out that the Michelin tires I bought a few months back had the Michelin Man right on the sidewall. Then, just a few weeks ago, there was an article about him in Fortune Magazine, so I just had to read it.
His name his Bibendum, which is a Latin gerundive which means, "Drinking to be done." To understand why they gave him a name synonymous with drinking, you must remember that 107 years ago, only wealthy well-to-do’s could afford cars and drinking and driving wasn’t really frowned upon yet.
Though he has become such a lasting icon, Bibendum came from pretty simple beginnings. Bibendum first came to the mind of Edouard Michelin when he and his brother Andres were at an auto expo in Lyon in 1894 and Edouard commented that some stacks of tires in a row looked like a line-up of tire men...all you had to do was add the arms.
It was just four years later in 1898 that Bibendum appeared in his first Michelin ad, a poster that depicted him as being so tough that he was eating broken glass.
Later in 1898, Bibendum was depicted as having just triumphed over two other tire men in a fight who looked notably like John Boyd Dunlop and the then-chief of Continental Tire.
Bibendum as a mascot made his debut in Paris in 1898 as well when an actor was paid to stand behind a cardboard cut-out of Bibendum at a cycle show to entertain the show’s patrons.
Bibendum was so popular an attraction at the show that Michelin’s rivals started shoving patrons, trying to get them away from the Michelin exhibit, and police had to be called in to restrain them.
It might seem a little much, but early tire manufacturing was a very competitive business that in those days catered only to the folks who were affluent enough to be able to afford motorized, wheeled transportation.
The industry's competitiveness even sparked a series of Bibendum ads in the early 1900s that had him standing in triumph, sword-in-hand, over fields of battered and bloodied tire men, crying out for mercy.
Then, in 1914, we finally saw the makings of the Bibendum of today when he appeared in an ad as a middle-aged good samaritan driver, cigar-in-mouth, lending a fellow motorist his best tire from his mid-section.
Today, you can catch the Michelin Man at auto expos and trade shows. Due to the risk of liability in today’s world, the actor inside Bibendum is under strict instructions not to say anything. Bibendum will take a picture with you, but he won’t put his arm around you, and keep his hands visible in front of him at all times. They’ve kept his name, but you won’t see today’s Bibendum bibending anymore...
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The Most Beautiful Benz Is The One That Saves Your Life...
Imagine that you are loyal to a car company with every purchase you have made for the past decade...then imagine that one of those cars saves the life of one of your loved ones.
There is not a single year of my life that has not been spent as a resident of Orange County, and as such, when I say that this winter’s rainy season was the worst I’d ever seen, even beating out 1993, which seemed impossible, I know what I’m talking about.
The worst day this winter for us came on December 28, 2004 when I was awoken by a call from my wonderful girlfriend of 7 years, Teresa, while on her way to work, telling me that she had been involved in a car accident.
If you’ve ever received one of those "accident" calls, you know the feelings I was experiencing at the time.
That morning, as I was driving down the 73 to get to where Teresa was, I was driving through, literally, one of the worst rain storms I have ever seen in my life.
Now, I figured that if Teresa had been able to call me to tell me she’d been in an accident, that was the most promising sign that she was, in fact, all right. The fact that she had been able to tell me that she had not hit any other cars and describe what had happened as she slid off the road was also reassuring, but I must admit that as I arrived to where the car had slid off the road, literally bent the guard rail into a "U" and was sitting in six-inch deep mud, I became very worried.
Then, when I saw the car, I became even more worried...but, as I got to Teresa, she looked a little shaken up, but seemed totally fine. The OC Fire Authority was there and I can’t thank them enough for the job they did caring for Teresa that morning.
Teresa was taken by ambulance to Hoag and was given a clean bill of health. Though she had a bit of soreness in her neck for a couple days, otherwise, Teresa came out of the accident completely unharmed.
That morning, Teresa’s 1998 Mercedes-Benz C230 did exactly what we had bought it to do...save her life.
When something in the road blew out the car’s right front tire and the mass of water in the road from the downpour sent the car veering off the road uncontrollably, it wasn’t the "luxury" part of the car that saved Teresa that morning, it was the century of unparalleled safety engineering.
Later in the morning, when we went to the towing yard to get Teresa’s things out of the car, the workers there commented about how they hoped whoever was driving the car, described by them as in the worst condition of any car they’d seen in a long while, was making it through okay, and I amazed them by telling them that she was right there, walking next to me.
A Mercedes-Benz looks beautiful sitting, shiny and new on the car lot and looks and feels beautiful as it performs out on the road, but you’ll come to find that the most beautiful Mercedes-Benz that you will ever see is the one that saves your life.
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Why Ethics Are In Decline...
There are two reasons that I am writing about business and ethics again today.
Reason #1: At the end of May, I began receiving emails from Strong Financial, my former investment company that became my former investment company after it’s founder and captain, Dick Strong was caught using time zones and different closing times of international markets to pad his own personal stake in the company. These emails were talking about how exciting it was for Strong Financial customers that Strong Financial was going to be “merged” into Wells Fargo, thus resulting in access to new Wells Fargo investments. I must admit that I had a very difficult time getting excited about this because I knew that the only reason these Wells Fargo investments were being made available to me was because Dick Strong acted in an unethical manner, was caught, and forced out of his leadership positions, resulting in the fail of Strong Financial and the necessity for it to be picked up by Wells Fargo in order to survive. Could you imagine spending your life building a company, then losing it just because you got a little greedy? This time-zone play was wrong and Dick Strong knew that it was wrong, and now his life’s work is going to end up as part of a division of Wells Fargo.
Reason #2: Teresa was at traffic school this past Saturday and re-told to me a story that the class’s instructor told her. When this instructor was a young girl, her family was involved in a car accident while on a road trip. The evening of the accident, the instructor and her sister found themselves in a strange town with nowhere to stay the night while their parents were in the hospital being treated for their injuries. The instructor’s mother called for a priest and the priest found a family for the girls to spend the night with that lived in the same town that the hospital was in. As the instructor was telling the story to Teresa’s traffic school class, she commented on how things were different back then and how people could be trusted.
We all know that things were different back then, but then this led me to ponder the question of why we have accepted this decline in ethics over time.
There is no question that, on the whole, American society grows more and more unethical every year. American business can do little but follow that trend because American business is made up of the same individuals that make up American society.
Ethics do not decline overnight, so there is not a clear-cut morning where we wake up and things are suddenly unethical, but even though this slide of ethics has occurred over decades, I cannot help but ponder why there are so many people out there in the business world that tolerate loose ethics, or a lack of ethics altogether, from the people they do business with and the people that they employ.
Why does an 18 year-old kid in the work place today think it is perfectly all right to sit in the company bathroom and text message his friends while on the clock? Is it technology’s fault? Is it how children are raised now as opposed to then?
It may be part of the reason, but what I am coming to believe is that the largest portion of blame for this slide in ethics lies with people out there in the business world who tolerate it.
Ethics thrive when unethical behavior is not tolerated, therefore, naturally, ethics decline when unethical behavior is tolerated. The text messaging kid’s managers know what he is doing, but they continue to let it happen. If the company’s owner knew what the kid was doing, he would be fired, but why do the managers tolerate this unethical behavior? Their tolerance of it not only allows his unethical behavior to continue, but contributes to the rise of unethical behavior from others at the company as well.
So, what can we as business owners and professionals do to ensure that ethics stop declining? Never tolerate unethical behavior from those we do business with and those that work for us.
Reason #1: At the end of May, I began receiving emails from Strong Financial, my former investment company that became my former investment company after it’s founder and captain, Dick Strong was caught using time zones and different closing times of international markets to pad his own personal stake in the company. These emails were talking about how exciting it was for Strong Financial customers that Strong Financial was going to be “merged” into Wells Fargo, thus resulting in access to new Wells Fargo investments. I must admit that I had a very difficult time getting excited about this because I knew that the only reason these Wells Fargo investments were being made available to me was because Dick Strong acted in an unethical manner, was caught, and forced out of his leadership positions, resulting in the fail of Strong Financial and the necessity for it to be picked up by Wells Fargo in order to survive. Could you imagine spending your life building a company, then losing it just because you got a little greedy? This time-zone play was wrong and Dick Strong knew that it was wrong, and now his life’s work is going to end up as part of a division of Wells Fargo.
Reason #2: Teresa was at traffic school this past Saturday and re-told to me a story that the class’s instructor told her. When this instructor was a young girl, her family was involved in a car accident while on a road trip. The evening of the accident, the instructor and her sister found themselves in a strange town with nowhere to stay the night while their parents were in the hospital being treated for their injuries. The instructor’s mother called for a priest and the priest found a family for the girls to spend the night with that lived in the same town that the hospital was in. As the instructor was telling the story to Teresa’s traffic school class, she commented on how things were different back then and how people could be trusted.
We all know that things were different back then, but then this led me to ponder the question of why we have accepted this decline in ethics over time.
There is no question that, on the whole, American society grows more and more unethical every year. American business can do little but follow that trend because American business is made up of the same individuals that make up American society.
Ethics do not decline overnight, so there is not a clear-cut morning where we wake up and things are suddenly unethical, but even though this slide of ethics has occurred over decades, I cannot help but ponder why there are so many people out there in the business world that tolerate loose ethics, or a lack of ethics altogether, from the people they do business with and the people that they employ.
Why does an 18 year-old kid in the work place today think it is perfectly all right to sit in the company bathroom and text message his friends while on the clock? Is it technology’s fault? Is it how children are raised now as opposed to then?
It may be part of the reason, but what I am coming to believe is that the largest portion of blame for this slide in ethics lies with people out there in the business world who tolerate it.
Ethics thrive when unethical behavior is not tolerated, therefore, naturally, ethics decline when unethical behavior is tolerated. The text messaging kid’s managers know what he is doing, but they continue to let it happen. If the company’s owner knew what the kid was doing, he would be fired, but why do the managers tolerate this unethical behavior? Their tolerance of it not only allows his unethical behavior to continue, but contributes to the rise of unethical behavior from others at the company as well.
So, what can we as business owners and professionals do to ensure that ethics stop declining? Never tolerate unethical behavior from those we do business with and those that work for us.
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