The Purple Onion

Buried in the floor of the National Cathedral, Washington DC, along with President Woodrow Wilson, side-by-side, the ashes of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, Keller's teacher and companion. Anne Sullivan had her first experience helping someone totally disabled, a deranged child in an asylum. Later, Helen Keller's parents sought her help for a child who could not see or hear, a child in a world of total darkness. Sullivan first made neurological contact with Keller at a hand water-pump by pumping water over Keller's hand. She then used the methods first developed by Spanish monks, sign language on her hands.

As we know, Keller went on to be one of the world's great inspirations; honored around the world for her writing and speaking. Hitler so despised disabled people that the first book on his list in his book burning, cleansing, of German libraries, The Autobiography of Helen Keller. Keller one said that her food would probably taste better, if just once she had the chance to see it. In modern day parlance, the fancy restaurant sells the sizzle, not the steak. So, sight and hearing leads to dining appreciation.

Thank God, I was not blessed with an expensive palate. From a poverty stricken home, we were blessed with anything to eat. Through many years of college, I settled for the drips and drabs of food (for eight years, ate on $1 a day). My great gastronomical experience was in the military service...I even enjoyed hospital food, food on airplanes. Even now, living alone, preparing my own food, I am blessed with whatever I can “round up”. “Going out” to eat, entails stopping with my driver at a fast-food place. But, over the years, traveling the world, I have been exposed to outstanding cuisine in extraordinary restaurants, mostly as a guest of someone wanting/willing to pay the price.

At a meeting in San Francisco, I ate at The Purple Onion, one of the world's famed restaurants, founded in 1952, where such stars as Phyllis Diller and Bob Newheart were discovered. Over the years, owning a prestigious co-op apartment in Manhattan, where I would spend a week each month, I was invited several times to eat at the Russian Tea Room, operated by Russian Immigrants from 1927 until 1989, this famous restaurant is right next to Carnegie Hall, a favorite eating place of Ayn Rand and Toscanini.

Whether in a famous, expensive restaurant or a fast-food place, the line of demarcation between success and failure, always, management. There was a time when we stop at a McDonalds on the way to the beach, the last time, I said, “never again!” Such filth, recognized even by a blind man. Surely you have been in a business and said, “I would like to manage this place for 10 minutes.” Surely, one would think that any management worthy of the name could see the sorriness of the operation. It all starts in the home, children who cannot be disciplined, children who are unclean, who have no sense of class, will later as adults demonstrate their ignorance on the job. Whether you talk with the largest employer in town, or the smallest employer in town, all will give you the same answer when it comes to success in business: employees.

Your employees can make or break your business, at the Purple Onion, Russian Tea Room, McDonald's, Hardees, Walmant, Sears, anywhere, anytime, any place that you eat, shop, obtain service of any type, it is all a matter of management.

I once heard a recording of Walmart's business practices, everything in that, the world's largest business, done to exact specification. I believe you will find the same in franchise operations such as a McDonald's. Of course, as with government operations, where SOP (standard operating procedures) manuals are right there to tell you how to do everything. Some managers and employees just don't care, so it is in government, local, state, federal, where many bureaucrats just go through the motions until retirement, many elected politicians just get out of the job “what they can, while they can”. Many teachers, technicians, military people, professors, pastors, just play the games.

Cultural elites have no trouble with honesty, sincerity, passion as long as it involves them; they are a member of the “me” generation. Matt Drudge said, “anyone can be a specialist with a brain and a modem.” I have never known a con man I did not like, this is their forte. But, don't try to fool this old, blind man, there are things I can read about every individual I meet, like reading a book. Most of the time we are not fooling anyone, you can see the deception in their eyes, hear the fakery in their voice, determine their passion in their body language.

Speaking of food, one of my cousins came by my house and brought me a plate of food, he and his family had been eating at a restaurant, they took all their scraps, leftover bread, put it on a paper plate and brought it to me. The fakery of some people is not easy to discover, on that same day I gave him hand-painted, valuable glassware which his great grandmother kept on her dining room buffet. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. (Proverbs 15:3)

In my lifetime, Americans have become callous, fat and lazy. We have gotten a report from the commission appointed by the President to analyze our nation's deficit, over $200 trillion dollars. Any cuts, anywhere, will be considered draconian. After all, with such low interest rates, it costs no more to pay the interest rates now than it was a few years ago when the deficit was much, much lower. When you come to the reality of inflation, interest rates, the horror pit of taxation on property, you understand what poor management has been exercised on the national, state and local level. It is so simple, the more cuts in spending that are made, the more money which comes through taxation, money supposedly to payoff debt. Politicians can hardly wait to spend that money on some new hypocritical programs. The government has effectively destroyed all incentive toward success, hard work, providing for your future. Obama, Pelosi, Geitner, does not care anything about management...their, or your savings, only their or your spending, they still think you can manage your way out of a hole if you keep digging. The risk, the cost of employing people, insurance, the present day tort system, is not building a business or economy by destroying it, we have now seen what it is like to build a big, beautiful house, the American Dream, and then put a match to it.