Articles on PR for People

Book Review: Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima

We get old and what is erased? If that is the philosophical question to be explored in this sweeping work (no pun intended), then Ivan Klima answers it. It is difficult to fall in love with “Love and Garbage.” The title alone feels like the author is intent on destroying love the same way one would toss garbage into a incinerator to watch it explode. The narrative covers the protagonist’s childhood through to his adulthood—he is a great literary writer reduced to being a street sweeper by the Czech Communist regime that censors his work. 


Book Review: A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux

On the surface, Ernaux’s work is unapologetically unsentimental, but on a deeper level, her finely crafted prose conjures many layers of raw emotion that have been stripped of all pretense.

The Hymn in Her Heart

The Reverend Anne Saunders almost died when she was a child. Scarlet fever ran rampant, afflicting children everywhere, regardless of the color of their skin or how much money their families had. In the late 1930s, most children stayed home to heal, but Anne Saunders was so sick that her father wanted to take her to the hospital. He was told that if he took her to the hospital, she wouldn’t be alive when she got there.


Book Review: How To Know A Person by David Brooks

David Brooks explores a richly textured landscape far beyond the usual scope of his Sunday NYT oped piece. “When I was young, I wanted to be knowledgeable, but as I got older, I wanted to be wise,” he states. Brooks is not alone in his quest seeking wisdom. There is a great need to see a person for who he or she really is inasmuch as there is a deeply heartfelt desire to be loved for who we really are.  


Book Review: Small is Beautiful

German economist E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful is more relevant today than when he wrote this gem of a book in the early 1970s. There is, without a doubt, a universal idolatry of gigantism (bigness). How big is big enough, one wonders. And ironically, once great size is achieved among nations, companies or portfolios, there is the ever pressing need to create smallness within the bigness, so the girth can be efficiently managed. 


Book Review: Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker emphasizes that all of us can separate the wheat from the chaff by focusing on the right priorities. Mega talent like DaVinci, Napoleon, Mozart have always managed themselves. With talent alone they would have fallen off the pages of history. We can all use a little help learning to manage ourselves.

 


Ho Ho Ho! We Want the Ho!

Several times a month, I travel by car through Southwest Washington. The stretch between Raymond (population 3,081) and South Bend (population 1,746) is rife with State Patrol and local police who vigilantly monitor the many speed traps. It’s slow going on Hyw 101. Trump rallies, populated by signs, not people, sprout like weeds between the wetlands and the food trucks. Some signs read: Joe & Ho Gotta Go.

 


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: A Sacred Place

We all want to go home. Even when we leave and go to parts unknown, there is a longing to return to the place where we came from. We can return to our home in our hearts and minds, but it is never as satisfying as actually going home. St. Mary’s Church has been home for many generations for nearly two centuries. The impending closure of St. Mary’s Church has prompted many of us to think about what it means to have a relationship with a Sacred Place.


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: On Courage

Courage is a forgotten virtue. Too often courage is shoved aside and replaced with bluster, anger, and abuse. Just ask the actor Robert De Niro. Outside the courthouse during Donald Trump’s criminal trial, De Niro expressed his fears about what another Trump presidency would bring to America.


Book Review: Get the Picture

Get the Picture is a delicious romp through the New York City Contemporary Art World. Bianca Bosker draws in the reader from the onset with her tone that is equal parts confidential and confessional. From small time gallery owners and rising artists to outrageous performance artists and madcap collectors, she consorts with anyone who will reveal the answer to an age-old question: What is Art?