Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to dine with the executive team of Homegrown Organic Farms, which operates one of the largest organic blueberry operations in the country. I’ve rarely met a more open, honest and intelligent group — and I am not saying that just because they are customers — so passionate about their product. It being our first meal together we spent time swapping stories family and corporate histories. My team, lead by local Xpedx technical sales representative Chris Kampsen then had a chance to learn about the range of new products they hoped to introduce. They asked our help to develop the necessary packaging. { read more }
Over the July 4 weekend the National Catholic Reporter, one of the most widely read newspapers among Catholics and other faiths, published my article about immigration on its front page. The piece is a little bit more political than the blog I wrote on immigration because I point to the Republican Party as the main reason we will not get comprehensive immigration reform this year. 
I remember exactly where I was when the insurer American International Group (AIG) collapsed in 2008–standing in Intercontinental Airport in Houston, waiting for a flight to Mexico. The news sent a shiver through me. I knew at that moment the long expansion of our economy had ended. I also concluded in an instant that we would not purchase the $4 million printing press that I had been on the verge of buying. Time to preserve cash, I figured. Get ready for reduced demand. Hunker down. 
Thirty years ago I never imagined being in formation, commemorating Memorial Day in formal ceremony, while dressed head-to-toe as a corporal in Union Army uniform. No, while marching in the streets of London protesting apartheid, the nuclear arms race and the bombing of Libya during graduate school I didn’t project myself standing here at requiem arms honoring the American dead of wars past and present, but specifically those who died between 1861 and 1865. 