Weekend Digest: The Rosie The Riveter Edition
by April 25, 2015 8:02 am 158 views
TV PREVIEW: THE SESSION ENDS, HUCKABEE 2.0 & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
This week on Talk Business & Politics:
The legislative session ends, but there is still work to be done. What was accomplished, what will carry forward? We’ll explore.
Mike Huckabee sets a date for an announcement. What will happen on May 5th in Hope, Arkansas? Our political roundtable includes KATV’s Janelle Lilley and Talk Business & Politics contributors Jessica DeLoach Sabin and John Burris.
Finally, entrepreneurship in Arkansas. Have we turned a corner? This week, there was a lot of buzz over college business plans. In the coming weeks, much more programming is on the way.
Our business roundtable includes Entrepreneurship director Jordan Carlisle, Innovation Hub CEO Warwick Sabin, and Arkansas Capital Corp. chief Sam Walls join me for a conversation.
Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on Sunday at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7.
THE ICONIC LIFE OF MARY DOYLE KEEFE
Mary Doyle Keefe is one of the most iconic and legendary models that you know but couldn’t name.
She died this past week at the age of 92. Who was she?
Mary Doyle Keefe was a young telephone operator, with no experience in riveting, when a neighbor in Arlington, Vt., asked whether she would pose for a painting.
The neighbor was Norman Rockwell, and the painting was “Rosie the Riveter,” the iconic image of a red-haired, red-lipped bruiser of a woman with a rivet gun in the lap of her overalls and her heavy foot atop a copy of Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf.”
On May 29, 1943, midway between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Allied victory in World War II, the painting appeared on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It later decorated posters advertising government bonds to finance the war effort.
Read more on the life and story of this model and the Rockwell painting she posed for. For an Arkansas angle, you may not know, but “Rosie the Riveter” is on exhibit at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville.
“OPERATOR APP…CAN I HELP YOU?”
From Uber cofounder Garrett Camp and former Zynga exec Robin Chan, the new Operator app matches online shoppers with sales reps.
The Internet has changed how we shop: We have more options, more information about those options, and we never have to interact with another human in order to complete a transaction.
But while shopping online may be less physically demanding than going store-to-store, the overwhelming number of choices online can make it a mentally exhausting experience. The Operator app wants to fix that, bringing customer-sales reps to the online marketplace, according to TechCrunch.
The creators of Operator are betting that many online shoppers will choose old-fashioned customer service over reading customer reviews. Would you?
Find out how it works at this link.
DO YOU GET THE MONDAY MORNING BLUES?
Want to shake it off? OK, what if we told you actually it’s not that much of an issue anyway.
Maybe employees like Monday’s. Tell me why. A new poll of over 2,000 American employees by Ipsos Public Affairs has challenged the concept of Monday Morning Blues.
More than 30% of respondents declared they were “confident” about starting the work week, compared to about 20% who shared they were “stressed” going in.
Surprised? Rethink the daily grind here.
SO LONG TO FM
In Norway that is in 2017.
Norway’s Ministry of Culture recently announced the country will stop FM radio analog broadcasts in 2017 and move to digital radio.
While digital broadcasts exist in other countries, Norway will be the first country to completely switch from analog to digital audio broadcasting.
Why did the minister make this radical decision for “better radio”? Go to this link for the complete story.
50 YEARS OF CAMPAIGN PHOTOGRAPHY
It had “appeal” to David Hume Kennerly. He called his instinct for becoming a photographer, “the ultimate show and tell.”
Now, 50 years later the legendary shooter has posted some of his best campaign photography for POLITICO.
News photographers tend to be tough, able to survive being shot at, both for real and verbally. The way I grew up in the business, the photo editors weren’t polite people. You were afraid of not getting the picture because the consequences of getting yelled at by an editor were way worse than getting attacked on the street by rioters—you could get shot at, beaten up, they didn’t care. They just wanted to see the pictures. They didn’t have HR in those days to complain to. I got better at taking photos out of sheer fear.
Take a look at this link.
THE CHURCH OF SEX
A group in Nashville has come up with a creative way to skirt the city’s zoning laws.
Six nights a week, The Social Club in downtown Nashville holds parties for couples and singles to dance, flirt and mingle.
Sometimes they take the festivities upstairs — to the private beds, the love swings, the group play areas, the “Sybian” room or the dungeon.
Yes, people have sex there.
But The Washington Post reports to beat zoning issues in their new building next to a Christian school, the swingers came up with a plan “to short-circuit the zoning static.”
“Their new club, they say, is a church — a church for swingers to meet, to mingle and to engage in the regular practice of their faith.”
Read more on this controversial effort at this link.
OPPONENTS OF GAY MARRIAGE PONDER NEW STRATEGY
The New York Times reports, “As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on same-sex marriage on Tuesday, the nation seems more ready to accept it than many imagined even a year ago.”
But divisions remain, and while more than half of Americans now endorse the idea, about one-third say they oppose it, according to survey data from 2014.
“If the government wants to pretend to redefine marriage, I don’t think that will settle the issue,” said Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition.
Still, once the Supreme Court speaks, the decision is likely to spark widespread changes in political and business strategies. For the complete story, connect to this link.
THE VA’s TROUBLES
In a hard-hitting blog post The Weekly Standard takes an in-depth look at mismanagment at the Veterans Affairs Dept. revealed in hearings this past week.
One whistleblowing employee at the Oakland VA office testified that… veterans’ claims were left to collect dust for decades, many of them deemed “no action necessary.”
And:… told the story of a vet’s widow writing to the department about her deceased husband’s benefits: “She was dead six years by the time we got to that letter.”
Among the problems in Philadelphia: mail mismanagement, data manipulation, $2.2 million in duplicate payments to veterans, and alleged bullying and retaliation against employees.
Could it get any worse? Read on at this link.
IF YOU THOUGHT WE MOVED ON FROM THE NFL PATRIOTS’ DEFLATEGATE…
Well, not exactly.
To review:
A huge controversy erupted after it was learned that footballs the New England Patriots used in its 45-7 smashing of the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC championship game on Jan. 18 had been..wink, wink..underinflated. Better for passing you know and dang if we know how it happened. (wink, wink)
As the controversy boiled over Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick actually alluded later that maybe the balls lost some air due to possible atmospheric conditions.
Want to hear another good one?
“I usually tell a bunch of jokes at these events, but with the Patriots in town, I was worried that 11 out of 12 of them would fall flat.”
So who roasted the Patriots with repeated zingers like that this past week? Click on this link to find out.
HOW TO WIN AN ARGUMENT EVERY TIME
Not sure Forbes is going to help you win an argument with your husband or wife, but rather this is more about conflict with colleagues in the workplace.
Between the two of us, we’ve spent 50 years studying what makes people successful at work. A persistent finding in both of our research is that your ability to handle moments of conflict has a massive impact on your success.
How you handle conflict determines the amount of trust, respect and connection you have with your colleagues.
“Conflict typically boils down to crucial conversations—moments when the stakes are high, emotions run strong and opinions differ. And you cannot master crucial conversations without a high degree of emotional intelligence.”
Read more at this link.