Garden Gallop

Took a day of vacation today to join Dave Lautzenheiser and a bunch of other (mostly) seniors from Christ's Church at Mason for the annual Garden Gallop. Dave and Sarah Ferris organize this each year about this time; it's a trip to 3 or 5 nurseries/garden centers to shop for plants for spring planting and summer gardening.
This is at least the third time I've joined the group. I go for the fellowship, to keep Dave company (sometimes he and I are the only males), and to ooo and ahhh over all the annuals, perennials, vines, bushes, planters, hanging baskets, and garden doodads one can find at these garden centers. And every year he takes us to some places I've never been before.
This year we visited three garden centers on Ohio Pike/Route 125 east of town. I bought at least something at each of them; two offered us a group discount, and all gave new ideas.
I always have a container garden on the deck, and I decided this year to try something different: all foilage. I was able to find several unusual plants you just don't find at Home Depot and Lowe's. (But I saw some that I HAD seen at the big boxes, at much lower prices, so my shopping isn't over.)

Our gallopers posed for a group shot at one of the nurseries where we visited. We dodged raindrops
all morning. But the heaviest rains were on the way to the first stop and on the way home
after the afternoon was over.

We ate lunch at Quaker Steak and Lube. Great onion rings! They're giving away a Harley later this year, but I didn't enter the contest. Think of it as Cracker Barrel with motor cycles and auto paraphernalia hanging from the ceiling and decorating the walls instead of antiques, washboards, and pictures of somebody's grandmother.
After lunch (a LONG lunch, but it didn't matter; we enjoyed the visiting), we drove back to Natorp's in Mason. It was the first time I'd been there this year: acres of BEAUTIFUL, healthy plants under one roof. Every kind of annual, vegetable, herb, and perennial you can imagine.
I have a gift certificate from there I want to spend, but I didn't have it with me today. (Didn't know we were going to go there.) So I looked at everything and made mental notes. I'm going back to Natorp's!
I began the day by running into the office and visiting with Matt Lockhart for about an hour regarding a proposal we're making to sign-on with a company that creates digital versions of magazines. We're seeking approval tomorrow, along with another significant request at the same meeting. I'm praying about this (and I don't say that flippantly). At home this evening I revised the P&L statement I had created in preparation for that meeting.

Weekend Update

It was a fine weekend.

Friday night we grabbed dinner at the Indian restaurant and then retreated to the family room to watch a couple of TV shows.

Saturday I took my taxes to the preparer. It was not good news, and I went to our HR department today to have my withholding increased. (I should have done this sooner, even though there are a couple of unusual circumstances this year that really socked me.)

Saturday afternoon we went to see Megan Lockhart's basketball game at the Mason Community Center. I had told Matt some time ago that we'd love to see her play, and this was the day. It was great to visit with Kim and Logan, and it was GREAT to see Megan's sixth-grade team, the Lady Shock, soundly beat their opponents. Megan herself had a great game, including making 3 of 4 freethrows, allowing me to grab some good pictures of her.

That evening we ate at Relish Modern Tapas (I had a Groupon) and then went across the street to the Regal Cinema to see The Monuments Men. Paul Friskney had told us, "Every ordinary person I've talked to likes the movie. It's only the critics who didn't like it." Call us ordinary. We liked it!

Sunday we awakened to rain, with the promise of snow and sleet before the day ended. The church decided to combine all worship in the main auditorium ad 9:00 and 10:30 (instead of two or three venues each hour). I would guess our attendance was 50% or less. When we arrived a little before 9:00, the parking lot seemed empty. (The crowd grew in the next 20 minutes, though.)

When we left about 10:30, it was sleeting. "Let's go to the store now, on the way home, so I don't have to go out again," I said, and Evelyn readily agreed. We stopped at Kroger's, and when we were leaving, the sleet had changed to snow, big flakes of snow.

Evelyn made cranberry-orange scones for brunch. We enjoyed them with scrambled eggs and turkey bacon and some strawberries. It was a wonderful meal!

I wrote a draft of an editorial after lunch and went outside about 3:00 to shovel the first round of snow while Evelyn graded papers from her Human Development class. (It snowed again later, hard, till about 9:00, and you couldn't tell I had shoveled.) 

When I came in I began assembling vacation pictures into a Shutterfly book till suppertime. Evelyn made vegetarian flatbread pizzas on purchased Naan, and we watched Dateline while we ate it. Then we saw a few Oscar guests on the red carpet before settling in to watch the whole show, starting at 8:30. (I can't remember when Evelyn and I both have stayed up all the way to its end. I guess it's a retirement thing with her!)

Seriously Studying a Prophet for the First Time

"So, are you going to be writing an editorial based on Ezekiel?"
Our vice president of product development, Matt Lockhart, was joking with me when I announced I had finished an assignment to complete some extra work for the company.
"No, I'm not anticipating that, but studying Ezekiel really was a blessing. I don't think I've ever studied the whole book of Ezekiel before!"
This spring Standard Publishing will release a teacher's study Bible, filled with commentary that first appeared through the decades in the company's popular and widely used Standard Lesson Commentary. Like so many projects in life--and in publishing--completing the commentary for the Bible has taken more time than planned. Before Christmas the editorial team recruited several employees, former employees, and freelancers each to take a section of the Bible to finish as soon as possible. With something close to an apology, Matt asked me to take on the book of Ezekiel.
I learned a lot, reading the book and reading the Ezekiel commentary that has been published by  Commentary writers through the years. It was something close to a devotional exercise, because periodically through the book, we authors were to insert a section called "What Do You Think?" with discussion questions for the teacher or group leader to use. Seeing the application of Ezekiel's prophecies and visions to the dilemmas and challenges of believers today was a blessing.
As I worked, I thought of the faithful editors who have so carefully prepared the Commentary chapters for decades, and I could see why some preachers buy each new annual edition as a reference for lesson and sermon preparation. My study made me almost--almost--interested in teaching the book of Ezekiel myself.
I'm guessing that might be a hard sell to my Thursday-morning men's group, though.

Happy Boss's Day!

 

"I read your blog, and I think you had a good idea."
"A good idea?"
"Yeah, we should have a dinner for all of us who are STAYING at Standard Publishing."
Well, we didn't have a dinner at work today, but we did have fun! It's Boss's Day, and the good people in the editorial department got together to assemble a whole platform of goodies to celebrate.
People were talking all day about the sugar shot they got from the spread. There WERE a lot of donuts, cookies, and brownies. And they were WONderful!
But I did save the pie in my lunch to eat another day!

Matt Lockhart, Jon Underwood, and Carla Crane led the line for the goodies (top) after five of the bosses (including me, Shawn McMullen, and Lindsay Black) posed in front of the spread.

Another Good-bye

We've been having hot, hazy weather this week, and the rising sun has been beautiful every morning on the way to work. I stopped in the church parking lot to try to capture it today. It was prettier than this, but this will help me remember it.

Today we had another going-away party. Joann VanMeter decided to retire (I think she had toyed with the idea for some time), and we had a surprise farewell lunch for her today at noon. Matt Lockhart expressed the company's appreciation for her 14 years (I think that's the right number) of service, most recently (and most valuably) as our rights and permissions manager. Her skill and knowledge of the whole rights scene has grown with her years of experience. That, plus her knowledge and concern for our customers and contributors and her warm personality and ready laugh all combine to make us very sorry she's leaving.
But she's not the only one to go. A week ago Friday I treated the Magazines staff to lunch so that Shawn McMullen could tell them that he's been recommended by the elders of Lifespring Christian Church to become their senior minister. He'll preach trial sermons at Lifespring's various campuses this month, and if the elders' call is confirmed September 29, he'll begin at Lifespring November 1.

This follows a summer in which we lost Jared Alexander, Robb Faust, Zach Davis, Valaira Hoskins, and a couple of others I didn't know as well and whose names I've forgotten.
Someone came by my desk after lunch today, "You're not planning on leaving, are you?"
"Not planning on it," I said.

Our Town Hall Meeting

Last week, Friday at 4:15, all of us at CFM received an e-mail requesting our attendance at a "Town

Peter Esposito

Hall Meeting" scheduled for today at 3:00. That, combined with a notice to clean our offices because "visitors" would be with us today and tomorrow, bred some concern about what would be announced at this required meeting.
As it turns out, it was nothing too dramatic. Peter Esposito explained that he is now Group President for New Mountain Learning, a combination of three textbook and education publishing enterprises in Minnesota with the two CFM Publishing companies located in Cincinnati, Standard Publishing and RCL/Benziger. The combination will create greater synergies of shared technologies as well as other benefits. Wicks, the private equity group that bought Standard Publishing in 2006, still owns us as well as the Minnesota concerns.
With Peter's expanded responsibility, he has named two Vice-presidents and General Managers, Jeff Seng for RCL/Benziger and Matt Lockhart for Standard Publishing. The new title will add marketing to Matt's current responsibilities for product development at Standard. I think he'll do a great job!

A Quiet Night

I don't remember a Christmastime when we've been finished decorating so close to Christmas. I think we're about there tonight, December 19. We were supposed to go with the Ambassadors Class on an outing, but we reneged because we planned to go see Bill Weber in the hospital. He was scheduled for gall bladder surgery this morning. But we found out after 5:00 that his surgery was postponed till tomorrow. It was really too late to join the Ambassadors outing, so I just came home . . . and used the time to finish up a couple of pre-Christmas tasks here.
Put up our tabletop tree with the white lights and the white and glass ornaments--it's one of our favorite traditions. And sorted out a mishmash of CD's that hadn't had much attention since last Christmas. Sorry Bill's surgery was delayed. Sorry to miss the fellowship with the Ambassadors. Glad for a quiet evening at home.
Skipped supper and ate a piece of turkey and cheese after 9:00, because Matt Lockhart took his direct reports for lunch today, as a pre-Christmas treat. We went to the Melting Pot and had a feast of cheese fondue; chicken, beef,and shrimp and lobster tail to cook; and chocolate turtle fondue with fruits and cake for dipping. It was a wonderful treat.
Two more days of work before a long Christmas break. Breakfast with my Thursday-morning men's Bible study guys in the morning at our favorite haunt, Cracker Barrel.

Find the Mark

Took two carloads of my coworkers to lunch today--all of them colleagues in our magazines work at Standard Publishing. Forgot to ask the waitress to take our picture, but I got the folks to pose for a picture outside the restaurant, Ferrari's Little Italy in Madeira. Then one of them, our Creative Services Director, Mark Haas, told me to jump into the frame and he snapped a second picture. He offered to Photoshop me into the first picture, but it's easier just to post both pix here. :-)

The lunch was a fun and tasty interruption to a productive planning day Paul and I enjoyed. Tomorrow I'm going to try to follow up on all of the ideas and assignments I've jotted down as a result.

The Best Part of Christmas?

Don't you love Christmas gifts? Especially when they arrive in the mail in a BIG styrofoam box? And when you open 'em, they're full of FOOD?! Steaks and pork chops and twice-baked potatoes and stuffed sole (and, oh yeah, there were hamburgers and "gourmet franks" in there too!).

Evelyn's brother and his wife sent us these goodies for Christmas, and we're having fun deciding when to eat them.

Needless to say, this was the most exciting part of the day. But the rest of the day was fairly productive. My desk is straight, and I have a long list of decisions to make and plans to finalize with Paul Williams when he shows up in the office tomorrow.

I'm taking the magazine people out to lunch, along with Mark Haas and Jared Alexander and Matt Lockhart--it's a Christmas celebration. And like the best Christmas celebrations, it's going to involve wonderful food!

Not Skeptical, Not a Pollyanna

Sometimes I have tried to analyze my tendency to bounce between being Pollyanna on the one extreme and cynical and skeptical on the other. I thought about that again today as I reflected on two events from the day.
One was a conference call with Doug Foster and Robert Welch to plan details for the Stone-Campbell Dialogue that will meet in Dallas this November. The Dialogue has been meeting for several years now, long before I was associated with it. It is an effort to acquaint leaders from all three streams of the Stone-Campbell movement in discussions to help them see where they agree and to foster Christian unity among the three groups.
The cynical side of me says, "Dialogue. Talk. Discussion. That's great, but what is accomplished in all of this? And are we experiencing unity richer, fuller, or more obvious now than before all the talk began?"
I'm still not sure I have an answer for all those questions, but I do believe the meeting we'll experience in Dallas this November will be worth the time of all who attend. We are planning a spiritual disciplines retreat, led by a lady from the churches of Christ and attended not only by the Dialogue team members, but also by 14 or 15 "young leaders," 5 from each of the streams, who minister in the Metroplex area. It will be a way to broaden the acquaintance of others with the goals and people in the Dialogue. And I believe it will be a worthwhile event just for itself, regardless of any future implications or lack of them.
Late this afternoon I sat in with the VBS production team to talk about an article about Standard Publishing's 2013 VBS in the January issue of Christian Standard.
At first I was skeptical and critical of the decision to introduce a VBS theme based so closely on a previous course. ("God's Big Backyard" was Standard's 2008 VBS.) But after talking with Matt Lockhart and the VBS team, I can see all the reasons for doing this, all the ways next year's course will be different and better than the previous one, and all the creative and new features users will enjoy in "God's Backyard Bible Camp." I'm looking forward to laying this all out there in an interview-format article that will appear in our January issue.

It's All About the People

Not long after I came to work at Standard Publishing, I often remarked, in something close to awe, that the best part of my job was the wonderful people I was able to meet from around the country, and even around the world. What a privilege I've had to know so many church leaders and their spouses, some of the finest souls on this earth. I've sat in committee and board meetings with them, and worked on projects with them, and listened to them speak in workshops and at conventions. Many have become more than acquaintances, and I've seen how they order their lives in a way that honors God and leads the church and influences the world.
Of course, I've worked more closely with some remarkable people too as I've taken on various jobs here at Standard Publishing. Maybe I'll take time to tell stories about some of them as I decide what to write day-by-day on this blog. But for now, I'll just picture two of them, whose picture I snapped yesterday at the end of the workday.

Matt Lockhart is vice president of product development here at Standard and the fellow I've reported to for the last year and a quarter.  Paul Williams has worked with me from Day One as editor-at-large of Christian Standard. Paul spent the day with me yesterday brainstorming about the future and helping me plan upcoming issues of the magazine. We had a good day, but the memory that brings the best smile to my face is this picture that reminds me of the many contributions each of these fellows has made to my work and my life. What a treasure to know and work with both of them!

One Day in the Life of an Extrovert

When I interact with people, I feel energized, even if the situation is difficult.
When I sit alone and stew about my situation, I feel negative--either frustrated or worried or afraid, or maybe bored--depending on how negative the situation is. This is a classic description of an extrovert, and, of course, anyone who knows me knows I am a CLASSIC EXTROVERT.
Well, all I can say is that I felt both ends of the pendulum today, energized in some difficult situations and negatively stewing in at least one. If this were a real diary instead of a public one, I'd elaborate. But, once again, "it wouldn't be prudent."
Some highlights:
Spoke with Stephanie Woeste, our v.p. of marketing, about next steps for making the decision to take Christian Standard monthly.
Read two proofs (one for The Lookout and one for Christian Standard), prepared some posts for Jim Nieman to post on the web, worked with him to decide the final layout for our May 27 issue, and worked with him to choose and edit some Letters to the Editor for that issue.
Went with Bob Wallace to have lunch with Larry Collins and Abi Platt to discuss Standard's relationship with and sponsorship of the North American Christian Convention.

Unbeknownst to us, Skyline was celebrating Opening Day by offering a free coney with every order. Lucky we
got there at 11:30 ahead of the crowd. I gave my free coney to Bob Wallace.  :-)

Participated in a conference call with representatives of our printer to discuss a couple of hiccups in their mailing and distribution of our magazines.
Met with Matt Lockhart as we do most Thursdays. Discussion today included how the company will respond to revenue shortfalls and the 9-month projection for the magazines budget. I submitted the budget I had created to the finance department. Handled a bunch of e-mails that I owed, and gathered and planned work to do this weekend.
Arrived home to find Jennifer here, as we planned. Evelyn fixed us a nice dinner, and we've spent the evening visiting, looking at the disc with all of her engagement pictures, hanging out.
Now I'm relaxed and energized. I'll allow the reader to guess when I felt different during the day. When I read this a year from now, I'm sure I'll remember the answer.

A Nice Way to End the Week

A busy day at work today: reading manuscripts, clarifying some assignments, knitting together details for my travel next week. Met with the staff to discuss production and other issues for the next few weeks. Matt Lockhart asked all his direct reports if they'd like to go to lunch, and I was the only one available. We went to BD's Mongolian Grill--a fun place with an infinite number of possible combinations: Go through the bars and put meat and pasta in a bowl, and then pile on the vegetables of your choice. Choose or mix your sauce--Asian or Mexican or Italian, mild or tangy or spicy. Then take the bowl to the guys at a huge, tablecloth-size grill where they stir-fry it all up for you to take back to your seat and eat with white rice, brown rice, or soft tacos. Yummy.

More than I had planned to eat for lunch, though, because Evelyn and I took Verna Weber to supper at Mimi's tonight. And the three of us are sitting in our living room with our feet up as I write this. Verna is home for two weeks when she wanted to be in New Zealand with Bill visiting their daughter and husband and grandkids. She aborted her trip in Los Angeles when she got word that her mom had been taken to the hospital. So we asked her if we could give her some company tonight. She's staying overnight, and I'm expecting to see pajamas soon.

She's spending a lot of time at Mason Christian Village where her mother, Mildred Holmes, is in the nursing wing after two hospitalizations. We'd enjoy having Bill here, but it's fun to just hang out with Verna.
Good friends create a wonderful excuse to relax, eat (yes, eat!), and talk about life. What a blessing to have them!