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“I have always pressed forward with any charge which was given unto me”
– Paul Giamatti as John Adams Sr. written by Kirk Ellis
“Trust NO MAN living with power to endanger the public liberty”
John Adams 1772
info about John Adams
The HBO mini-series about John Adams I believe is a masterful piece.
info about the Gadsden Flag .
I have loved my interactions with Mr. Derek Hambly.
His paintings I find to be invigorating and inspiring.
You can check out more about him at his site [here].
Here is my favorite painting I began my discussion with him.
In studying all his work I found it most interesting his use of yellow. When I asked him about his use of yellow in the painting above; he lost his breath and went on to confide in me how when he was a student his nickname was “yellow”…
As many say we are what we eat, I like to also think we are what we paint. . .
Like his Swedish contemporary Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni helped to shape a new language of cinema, of emotional alienation that was conveyed through both performance and mise en scene. I’ve struggled to figure out why Bergman’s films seemed aloof while Antonioni’s affected me deeply, though both certainly attained their fair share of iconic imagery. Antonioni’s most outrageous and debated set pieces, such as the tennis match in Blow-Up and the exploding of capitalism in Zabriskie Point, are still impossible to forget.
The master of Swedish cinema, Ingmar Bergman, passed away Monday July 30th at age 89, leaving behind a legacy of over 50 films from a career spanning 7 decades. Known for his existential and soul-searching dramas, Bergman came to international notice with his 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, and solidified his status as a master technician two years later with his classic The Seventh Seal. (of which he writes about as case study in his book he published about cinematography I studied)
I really admire Jeremiah Trotter for many reasons…
He has faced diabetes in his family (his story below) just as I have with my great grandmother who lost her battle with it.
The Jeremiah Trotter Foundation is committed to the awareness and elimination of diabetes through research and education.
His Personal Story
Jeremiah is personally motivated and dedicated to his foundation because of his real life experience with this disease. Growing up in Hooks, Texas, Jeremiah struggled watching his younger sister go through the pains and inconveniences of having diabetes. He witnessed her undergo the tiring task of administering insulin injections every day. After the passing of his father, Jeremiah knew he wanted to create a foundation in his memory. He further decided to focus the foundation on the awareness and elimination of diabetes in honor of his 24-year-old sister with this disease. Through The Jeremiah Trotter Foundation, Jeremiah hopes to prevent any person from going through what his father and now sister must endure.
Thank you Will Smith & Chris Gardner for sharing your incrdible story with the world!
The Pursuit of Happyness is a 5 star movie in my book!
the movie inspires hope to all that watch it !
It is Basketball Diaries meets Finding Forrester to me…
There are so many powerful moments in the script.
This is a great article written by SFGate.com about the man behind the story.
John Hagelin Phd
I dig this dude - he’s awesome…
he’s a speaker in the secret and collaborates with David Lynch
http://www.lynchweekend.org/images/photo_david.jpg
check out his take on Search/Time space
Both Walker and Penney had strongly embedded principles they thought important in the conduct of their businesses and their daily lives. Each had well-defined philosophies about their goals in life. The following selections show both their determination and their dedication to meet those goals.
At the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the National Negro Business League in 1912, no women were included on the schedule of speakers. Madam Walker shocked the participants when she walked up and claimed the podium from moderator Booker T. Washington:
Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face. I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race. I am a woman who started in business seven years ago with only $1.50. . . .this year (up to the 19th day of this month . . .) I had taken in $18,000. (Prolonged applause). This makes a grand total of $63,049 made in my hair business in Indianapolis. (Applause.) I have been trying to get before you business people to tell you what I am doing. I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South; I was promoted from there to the wash-tub (laughter); then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. . . . I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. Don’t think that because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady! (prolonged applause.)1
At the Fourteenth Annual Convention, Madam Walker was on the schedule, explaining to the audience how she had succeeded in the business world:
In the first place I found, by experience, that it pays to be honest and straightforward in all your dealings. (Applause.) In the second place, the girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort, and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their doors. . . . I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the wash-tub for more pleasant and profitable occupation. (Hearty applause.) Now I realize that in the so-called higher walks of life, many were prone to look down upon “hair dressers” as they called us; they didn’t have a very high opinion of our calling, so I had to go down and dignify this work, so much so that many of the best women of our race are now engaged in this line of business, and many of them are now in my employ.2
My Newly Acquired Associates:My talk to you this evening is to be very brief and very much to the point. The name of our store is “The Golden Rule Stores.” The policy upon which we expect to build is just what the name implies. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think I need say no more, because in those few words, I have said much. If a business can be built on the principles of the Golden Rule, and I firmly believe it can, we shall go forward and some day we shall add to this one unit another store and another store, and some day we might have as many as ten stores. Right here I want to emphasize this: treat our customers all alike and treat them as we would like to be treated as a customer. We will sell for cash only, thereby avoiding losses through credit; we will have no delivery system, so we can pass this saving on to our customers. We will have no expensive fixtures for which we would have to go in debt; we will pay cash for all our merchandise so we can take advantage of all discounts and not have to pay interest. We will buy only good merchandise to sell to our customers. Because of all the advantages that will be ours, we will sell for less and never will we sacrifice quality for an unreasonably low price.
This is my brief story in a simple and plain language. Now as you go forward tomorrow serving our customers, and the opportunity presents itself, tell them what I have said and tell them in such a way that they will understand we have opened a new kind of store, planned and designed to render service unprecedented in the history of merchandising. Solicit their continued patronage on the Golden Rule Motto.
When I went to Kemmerer in 1902, I had no idea that (in 1921) we would have 313 stores…but that didn’t prevent me from doing my best and working with all my might. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. –James Cash Penney
James Cash Penney was born September 16, 1875, to Mary Paxton and James Cash Penney, Sr., on a farm near Hamilton, Missouri. Shortly after his son’s birth, the elder Penney, who combined occupations of stock farmer, Primitive Baptist preacher, and politician, moved his family to town so that his children could attend school. Although Penney’s father was a figure of some consequence in the community, he was constantly short of cash. When Jim, as he was called, was eight, his father told him he would be responsible for purchasing his own clothing. Over the next few years, young Penney worked on surrounding farms, raising pigs, trading horses, and growing watermelons.
In 1895, two years after his high school graduation, Penney discovered what would prove to be his life’s calling when he began working part-time as a sales clerk at a general store in Hamilton. He worked extremely hard and proved himself so adept at merchandising that he advanced rapidly. Although his first year’s salary was only $25, by 1897, he was making $300 a year, and his future appeared bright. Then he was given shattering news; his family doctor diagnosed Penney’s recurring health problems as the early stages of tuberculosis, and said that unless he moved to a dryer climate, he would likely die.
In June 1897, Penney went west in search of health and fortune. After working briefly in Denver as a dry goods clerk, he moved to Longmont, Colorado, where he bought a butcher shop. That business failed, however, reportedly because Penney refused to furnish free liquor to the chef of the local hotel, his largest client. Penney decided to return to the dry goods business, taking temporary employment as a clerk in Callahan and Johnson’s store in Longmont. Early in 1899, the owners offered Penney a permanent clerkship in their Evanston, Wyoming, store at a monthly salary of $50. He readily accepted. He did so well that a few years later, when he was 26, the owners offered to make him a partner in a new store they planned to open in 1902. Although they had intended to locate the store in Ogden, Utah, Penney objected on the grounds that Ogden was too large. He proposed that a smaller town like Kemmerer, Wyoming, would be better. Kemmerer was a mining town with about 1,000 residents and a company store that operated on credit. Penney opened the Kemmerer store on April 14, 1902. He used his $500 savings and borrowed the rest of the $2000 necessary to become a one-third partner in the venture.
Penney called his store the “Golden Rule,” because his idea was “to make money and build business through serving the community with fair and honest value.”1 Many in Kemmerer thought Penney’s business would fail. The local bank cashier strongly advised Penney against opening a “cash only” store because three other merchants had failed to compete successfully with the stores of the mining companies, which offered credit. Convinced that hard work could bring success, however, Penney and his partners decided to go ahead with the Kemmerer store.
Business was brisk on opening day, and Penney brought in an impressive $466.59. By the end of the year, he had sold $28,898.11 worth of goods and showed a substantial profit. His store carried men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, shoes, notions, and fabric for sewing. Penney increased his profits each year. In 1907 he bought out Callahan and Johnson and became sole owner of the Kemmerer store. In the same year he purchased two additional stores in Rock Springs and Cumberland, Wyoming.
Several things made Penney’s success possible. His stores were all located in inexpensive locations in small communities. He did not pay for elaborate fixtures and displays. He conducted business on a cash-only basis and treated his employees well. Perhaps most importantly, he carried merchandise that his customers wanted, ensuring a rapid inventory turnover. When one of his store managers had saved enough money, Penney would help him open a new store as part owner. The manager was responsible for investing one-third the amount necessary and Penney provided the remaining two-thirds. The manager agreed to train someone to take his place at the existing store. In turn, the new manager would train others until they started up their own stores as one-third partners. This arrangement allowed for rapid expansion in the early years of the business.
By 1909, Penney moved away from Kemmerer, leaving the store there to an associate. He went to Salt Lake City, Utah, approximately 125 miles southwest of Kemmerer, where he established the headquarters for the growing chain and consolidated his buying and accounting operations. Over the next three years he established 28 new stores in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. In 1913, Penney and his many partners incorporated the firm in Utah as J. C. Penney and Company, Inc. He had decided to abandon the name “Golden Rule,” which had been adopted by some of his less scrupulous competitors. Not long after the business was incorporated, Penney moved the firm’s headquarters to New York City where he would be closer to his major suppliers of merchandise.
Expansion became a regular program for Penney. Between 1920 and 1930, more than 1,250 new stores opened, most of them on Main Streets in small towns across America. Even the Great Depression did little to halt the Penney expansion program. By 1932, the number of stores had increased to 1,473. Although seven stores had to be closed in 1933, the company’s total profits were almost double those of 1932. Penney himself was not so fortunate. Through bad investments in Florida real estate and banking, he lost almost his entire fortune of $40 million. He met that crisis by going back to work full time for the company, and eventually he recouped most of his losses. When the day of modern shopping centers arrived in the late 1950s, Penney’s chain was so strong financially that it succeeded in suburbia too. By the 1960s, the company abandoned its cash-only policy by adopting its own credit cards and updating its merchandise (much of it manufactured under the Penney label). The company also opened its own catalog business.
Penney served the company as chairman of the board until 1958 and as a director until his death in New York City on February 12, 1971. When the business celebrated its 90th anniversary in Kemmerer in 1992, 21 years after Penney’s death, it had become a firm surpassing $15 billion in sales, and employing approximately 190,000 associates with more than l,300 stores scattered throughout the U. S. and Puerto Rico. This large national retail business continues to reflect the hard work and vision of James Cash Penney.
I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!1
Born as Sarah Breedlove in December 1867, in Delta, Louisiana, Madame Walker was the third child and second daughter of Minerva and Owen Breedlove. Former slaves, the Breedloves worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation and lived in a one-room cabin. By the time she was five, Sarah had learned to carry water to field hands, drop cotton seed into plowed furrows, and, for a dollar a week, wash white people’s clothes with strong lye soap, wooden sticks, and washboards.
In 1874, Sarah was left an orphan, and she moved in with her sister Louvenia. A few years later, after a failure of the cotton crop, the sisters moved across the river to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where they worked as washerwomen and domestic servants. At 14, Sarah married Moses McWilliams. At 17, she bore her only child, a daughter named Lelia. Her husband died in 1887, when Sarah was 19. Not willing to live with her sister again, Sarah set off for St. Louis where, she was told, laundress jobs were plentiful and fairly well paid.
For the next 17 years, Sarah supported herself and her daughter as a washerwoman. She went through a second, brief marriage and became active in the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. It was there that she encountered prosperous, well-educated African Americans, and as a result, she began to consider how to improve her appearance. Only in her thirties, she found her hair was falling out. She experimented with hair products already on the market, but nothing helped. Finally, as she told a reporter, God “answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it.”2
Because St. Louis already had several cosmetic companies, Walker decided to move to another city to set up her own business. She chose Denver because her brother’s widow and four children lived there. Her own daughter was by then at college in Tennessee. The one special friend she truly regretted leaving was Charles Joseph (C.J.) Walker, a sales agent for a local African-American newspaper.
Arriving in Denver in 1905 with $1.50 savings, she rented an attic room, joined the local AME church, and found a job as a cook. She saved her money and before long she was able to quit that job and, taking in laundry two days a week to pay her rent, spend the rest of her time mixing her products and selling them door to door. Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine, and Vegetable Shampoo were well accepted by the African-American women of Denver. By 1906, C. J. Walker moved to Denver and the two soon married. From then on, Sarah began calling herself Madam (sometimes spelled Madame) C. J. Walker, a name she thought gave her products more appeal.
At first, Madam Walker used all her profits for materials and advertising in papers such as Denver’s Colorado Statesmen. C.J. Walker, familiar with newspaper promotion campaigns, helped develop a marketing plan, design advertisements, and organize a mail order business for his wife’s products, but he was not as ambitious as she. As Madam Walker described: “When we began to make $10 a day, he thought that was enough, thought I ought to be satisfied. But I was convinced that my hair preparation would fill a long-felt want. And when we found it impossible to agree, due to his narrowness of vision, I embarked on business for myself.”3 She later divorced Walker, putting the 21-year-old Lelia in charge of the mail-order branch of the business while she traveled around the country promoting the products. Business grew and in 1908, Walker and Lelia settled in Pittsburgh where they established Lelia College, a training facility for the Walker System of Hair Culture.
Walker continued to tour the country promoting her business and hiring hairdressers and door-to-door sales representatives. She recruited and trained a national sales force that included schoolteachers, housewives, cooks, and washerwomen. Walker’s traveling agents taught these women to set up beauty shops in their homes, keep business records, and make their customers feel pampered and valued.
In February 1910, Walker visited Indianapolis, Indiana, and was very impressed with what she saw. The city had become the country’s largest inland manufacturing center because of its access to eight major railway systems. This would be a major asset for a mail-order business. The city also was home to a substantial African-American community, whose main thoroughfares were lined with cafes, offices, and other thriving businesses. Madam Walker decided to move her entire operation there. She built a factory, hair and manicure salon, and another training school. After intensive training in hair and beauty culture, graduates of the school were ready to give scalp treatments, restyle hair, and give manicures and massages. She soon had 5,000 agents throughout the country and her company was making $7000 per week.
In 1913, her daughter, who would later change her name to A’Lelia, persuaded Madam Walker to buy a house in Harlem as the New York base of the business. The house contained living quarters, a beauty salon, and a school for training salon operators. Walker soon began to spend at least half her time in New York and moved there permanently in 1916. She left the day-to-day management of her manufacturing operation in Indianapolis to F.B. Ransom, her attorney and general manager, and Alice Kelly, the factory forewoman. Later that year she built her dream house, a mansion in Irvington-on-Hudson, a wealthy community north of New York City.
By 1917, Walker agents were holding yearly conventions, learning new techniques and sharing experiences. One agent wrote in 1913: “You opened up a trade for hundreds of colored women to make an honest and profitable living where they make as much in one week as a month’s salary would bring from any other position that a colored woman can secure.”4 These employed women now were able to educate their children, buy homes, and support various charitable organizations.
By the time she died in 1919, the 51-year-old former laundress had become one of the wealthiest businesswomen of her day. She was mourned by many, including W. E. B. DuBois who wrote an obituary for The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “It is given,” he said, “to few persons to transform a people in a generation. Yet this was done by the late Madam C. J. Walker….[She] made and deserved a fortune and gave much of it away generously.”5
Walker left one unfulfilled dream. The dream grew out of an experience that enraged her. After she had been in Indianapolis for some time and was already a wealthy woman, she went one afternoon to the Isis Movie Theater and gave the ticket seller a dime, standard admission at the time. The agent pushed the coin back across the counter, saying that the price had gone up to 25 cents, but only for “colored persons.” Madam Walker, an enthusiastic moviegoer, immediately asked her attorney to sue the theater and hired an architect to draw up plans for a new building to house the Walker business. The building, covering a whole city block, was also intended to serve as a social and cultural center for the African-American community in Indianapolis. An elegant theater in the new building would welcome African Americans.
Madam Walker’s business was carried on by her daughter and is still in operation, although no one in the Walker family is currently associated with the firm. In 1927, A’Lelia Walker Robinson completed the Walker Building in memory of her mother. It is a fitting tribute to a woman who once proclaimed, “Perseverance is my motto!”
I have always loved the artwork of John Maggard
