"Something for which to be thankful"

Another good one. Happy Thanksgiving old friend!

Warmest Regards,

Joe Broz
Washington State, USA

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Hi, Jim:

May I offer Cunard's RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 as the answer to your 1 Dec 08 quiz.

She is currently on her way to Dubai, where she'll become a luxury hotel.

I hope she has a better future than her predecessor RMS Queen Elizabeth. She was parked alongside in Hong Kong and was to be converted to a university campus. Sadly, she went up in flames and was scrapped.

As you no doubt know, their sister ship RMS Queen Mary is parked at Long Beach, CA.

Kind regards

Peter N. Williamson
Canada

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Dear Jim,

Thank you as ever for your thought-provoking articles. Given the time of the year, do you still have your piece on the office Christmas party (2005 (sic--2004) NIP Impressions?)? If so, could you make it available again?

Kind regards,

Brendan McGrath
FM Global
Paris, France

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Done--as you can see above.

Jim

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Dear Jim,

Thank you for sending me Paperitalo Publications.

Best regards,

Rebecca G. Templado
Quality Control Department Head
Specialty Pulp Manufacturing, Inc.
Hilapnitan, Baybay, Leyte
Philippines

***

Jim,

Finally, an easy riddle! I believe that the answer is the cruise ship QE2 which has already arrived in Dubai, where it will recirculate some western oil dollars as a luxury hotel.

Best Regards,

Paul Tucker
International Paper
Loveland, Ohio, USA

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Dear Jim,

Thanks so very much for your 'Nip impressions'. I love to read them and often I'm forwarding them to colleagues in work and in other companies, while you combine a deep insight in all aspects of our industry with remarkable (business life's) philosophies.

Kees Herder MSc
Managing Director
Coldenhove Papier
Netherlands

***

"Stop it already!"

It is a sad situation that the Big Three unionized car builders cannot compete with car manufacturers in other countries and with the non-unionized manufacturers in the South. The new administration faces a tough problem. Should they give them the 25 Billion dollars of taxpayer money now with the probablility that they will be back for more later? Or should they let them go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for restructure backed by government finances with an opportunity to force union concessions such that they will be more competitive? Is it even possible with legacy costs for retirees that can become competitive?

It is supposed to be decided next week when the three CEOs return to present their plan to Congress.

Tommy Surles
Panama City, Florida, USA

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Tommy sent along a link to a relevant video from the Detroit News. You can link to it at "More" below.

Jim

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"Gene comments on the whole world"

Jim,

Hope you & Laura had a great Thanksgiving. Our oldest son Mike visited from NJ for three days. So we stayed home visiting, playing guitars, and shooting guns that have not been shot in 15 years (just target practice). One of the shooting friends had a .45 He said he pays $30 for a box of ammo. Ours were not nearly that expensive at the local Bass Pro Shop. And today we didn't get up until 7:30 a.m. so missed the 4 a.m. start time for black Friday business openings. Oh well, maybe next year.

RE: Adversity.

Thanks for the upbeat article on innovation (Adversity is the mother of invention?). Timely, as two of our children are either out of work or facing a layoffs.

The Webster, NY clan has been jobless since July. He just landed a new contract job in a position he was trying to be hired for when the company didn't fill the job at all. The son who visited this week works for Citicorp and will be laid off mid-January after 7 years. Both are smart and talented people who no doubt will find permanent employment eventually. I'm sending them your article just in case they didn't take my past advice to subscribe. As Monk says: You can thank me later.

Re: Let 'em fail.

Last month Bill Heard Chevy failed as you know. Thirteen locations - world's largest Chevy dealership & 11th largest in the world. When I was in that business I thought that - wow - what an organization. But then I never tried to do business with them and from some of the things I read today, it's probably a good thing. Our local Chevy dealer is struggling also but not for poor performance with the customer. The Jeep dealer has cut his used car inventory by 1/2 from the looks of his lot. If you were ever in the market for a car, now is the time to buy.

Could you convert the VW bug to electric drive? I read that just this summer a discovery was made to more efficiently store electricity in solar powered systems. Details were conspicuously absent in the "Scientific American" article.

We have "kit" cars. How about a DIY kit electric drive conversion?

And banks are on my list. I've been banking electronically since 1993 and today the service through electronic banking is worse than it was 10 years ago. Today I cannot reconcile my computer check book without manually cross checking the on line bank statement to pull together what's been paid (by the bank itself) but not yet cleared. Those pending transactions will not download into Quicken or MS Money. My last bank required 4 business days advance notice to pay any bill electronically. Good grief, let 'em fail.

Re: Paying for airline baggage.

You think the airlines thought about the tort law angle? More fine print on the back of the boarding pass? Soft drinks on USAir are now $2. I figure one can drink costs them about 11 cents before all the delivery expenses. Are they making money on that?

God Bless,

Gene Canavan
Prattville, Alabama, USA

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Gene, as a matter of coincidence, did you know that Chuck Green, a long time member of the Cellulose Community, lives in Webster, New York?

***

Jim:

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. We had 15 at the table. We're building a storage building and the carpenter showed up for work, to our surprise. Turns out he lives alone. So he became the 15th!

1. 7:25. I don't get it. How do you misread a 7 backwards on a digital clock?
2. Interviewing two potential Yale students this Saturday. I've done about 40 over the years. No success thus far, even though I gave 2 very high marks. Tells you something. About Yale and mid-Wisconsin schools.
3. Froze at yesterday's very discouraging Packer game.
4. At least I'm going skiing next week in Colorado!

George Mead
Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, USA

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George:

Nice of you to take in the carpenter. I baked pumpkin pies and took them to the patients and nurses that were in the blood cancers department at Emory Hospital. I've been doing that on Thanksgiving ever since I spent most of the holidays there a couple of years ago. Good news: there were 5 empty beds; the place is usually packed, even on the holidays. More good news: most of the patients were alert and chipper, not curled up in a fetal position like one usually finds them.

Re: clock. The sentence read: "Before he leaves, he sees a numberless analog clock in the mirror."

I fear the Ivy League schools think you are a rube if you come from west of the Delaware River--or maybe it's the Susquehanna.

Football is best watched on television with an adult beverage in one's hand. Although, I don't speak from much experience; never followed the game myself.

Skiing--a proper combination of snow and people. When I was a kid, I had to cut firewood every Saturday in the winter to keep us warm. One chunk of woods on our property was nearly all old maples that were about 3 to 4 feet in diameter with about an 18 inch hollow up the middle of each one. My job, after my dad felled the tree, was to chop off slices about 18 inches long with a (Sears) David Bradley 26" chain saw. This worked, since they were hollow. Then, when you got these disks flat on the ground, you could take a heavy ax and walk around, splitting them into nice, truncated wedges (I say truncated because of the hollow in the center). If you felled a tree one weekend and it snowed during the week, you had to dig it out of the snow before you started sawing. I bought one of those chain saws, junked, a few years ago at an antique tractor show auction. It is in my garage. It weighs about 30 lbs. Back in those days, I weighed 105, wringing wet.

Only skiing I ever did was during those times, too. I took some 1 x 4 pine shipping crate boards, built a fire, boiled some water in half of a 55 gallon drum and bent the ends up (after I had sawed them to a point). Then I nailed them to some worn out brogans (we actually called those kind of shoes "clodhoppers"), went over to a hill in the pasture, put them on, and slid down it. Nearly broke my legs (no quick release and very rough terrain).

Good old days? I don't think so. I still start getting depressed on the 22nd of June (just after the summer solstice) for I know the days are getting shorter and winter can't be far behind. Right now, I am excited for in less than 3 weeks the days are going to start getting longer. I know it's stupid, but years of therapy have not fixed this one yet.

I tell people I went to college to have central heat and air, and indoor plumbing. You don't have to worry about "keeping up with the Joneses" if you remember roots such as these.

Jim

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