Poor Joe lives not too far from me in Holland, Ohio. You know, “Joe the Plumber.” His Mom works at my favorite diner, Schmucker’s. They have had an interesting week, after being the topic of Presidential Debate #3. Joe just asked a question about taxes and now he is the Republican poster child and his life is scrutinized by all and sundry.

I can’t figure out this financial mess, can you? I’m watching the Dow Jones fluctuate (careen, actually, more like a bad roller coaster ride.) I’m watching the President, The Secretary of Treasury and the Chairman of the Fed – wing it. I’m watching G8 leaders, and wait, are they printing money, too? And I’m reminded of that Chicago song…Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is? Or, to paraphrase…Does anyone really know what is going on?

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

Chicago, April 1969

People runnin’ everywhere
Don’t know the way to go
Don’t know where I am
Can’t see past the next step
Don’t have to think past the last mile
Have no time to look around
Just run around, run around and think why

Does anybody really know what time it is
I don’t
Does anybody really care, care
If so I can’t imagine why
about time
We’ve all got time enough to die
Oh no, no

Chicago, April 1969

I think our leaky boat of life is taking on stress faster than any of us can bail. According to Dr. John Medina, author of  Brain Rules – Rule # 8 says that stressed brains don’t work well or learn well. The USA Today reminds us this week  “Don’t let the Economy Kill You.” But, I think Tom Friedman may have hit the nail on the head (Note: construction metaphor, not plumbing metaphor!)

Tom Friedman, Author of Hot, Flat and Crowded wrote in his  column this week:

I find myself re-reading a valuable book that I wrote about once before, called, “How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything in Business (and in Life).” Its author, Dov Seidman, is the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical corporate cultures.

Seidman basically argues that in our hyperconnected and transparent world, how you do things matters more than ever, because so many more people can now see how you do things, be affected by how you do things and tell others how you do things on the Internet. “In a connected world,” Seidman said to me, “countries, governments and companies also have character, and their character — how they do what they do, how they keep promises, how they make decisions, how things really happen inside, how they connect and collaborate, how they engender trust, how they relate to their customers, to the environment and to the communities in which they operate — is now their fate.”

We got away from these hows. We became more connected than ever in recent years, but the connections were actually very loose. That is, we went away from a world in which, if you wanted a mortgage to buy a home, you needed to show real income and a credit record into a world where a banker could sell you a mortgage and make gobs of money upfront and then offload your mortgage to a bundler who put a whole bunch together, chopped them into bonds and sold some to banks as far afield as Iceland.

It is about “how” we are more connected to one another, than not. And it is about “how” we act and “how” we live.

We are all connected to Joe.
And stress might be less if we all concentrate on the how.  I care about the how.

Blog needs change. My old blog (same name – different location) was hosted on our school server. I would like to own my content as much as that is possible today. I would like to have more options to display media on this blog. In short, I choose change.

Now, as we all know, change hurts. I began this process at about noon today and am finally posting this first new blog post at about 10PM. OK, I took a walk and a nap during that time also!

Now, I really need to go read!