However, before I jump into this discussion, I must first address a personal caveat on the way we approach leadership.  My views may be perceived as somewhat controversial.   My personal concerns relate to how we elevate leadership over other skill sets, that we have a tendency to exalt our abilities and skills over those whom we lead, the followers.  Perhaps the most integral character trait of successful leadership is humility – not perceiving ourselves as greater than, or more talented than those who have not been called or gifted as leaders.  For those of us who are of the Christian faith, we need to recognize that Jesus called us to take up our cross daily, and follow Him, to be His followers.  Nowhere did he discuss or extol leadership, and yet those that followed him paradoxically became strong leaders.  

I’m reminded of Joseph in the Old Testament who, as a young man, shared his aspirations of leadership with his brothers; how they, like the sheaves of wheat and stars of the sky, would bow down to worship him.  Because of his hubris and immaturity, he was thrown into the well by his brothers and ended up as a slave in Egypt.  After he went through the annealing process of being a slave and a prisoner, he was then promoted into the second highest position in the land of Egypt.  But he only reached this position after he had learned the lesson of humility and placing the needs of those whom he led over his personal needs.

Those of us that carry the mantle of leadership must be cautioned to use our skills in ways where those we work with are empowered and exalted, not to bring glory and recognition to ourselves.

As an exercise, I would challenge you to read through the 31 chapters of the book of Proverbs and count the number of times Solomon addresses pride and humility, with pride leading to disgrace, while humility leads to honor and wisdom.  It will surprise you.

So much for my preamble.

I would like to address initially what I feel is the best way to acquire leadership, after which I will speak about the qualities that I find are inherent in strong, productive, effective leadership.

To flesh out the first part of my talk – how does one acquire leadership skills?  There are a number of ways, and I will elaborate on those, and conclude with what I feel is the best way to become a leader.

1.   Obviously one of the ways is to attend seminars such as the one that we are attending today where we garner from other leaders what they feel constitutes leadership.  These seminars are invigorating, informative and full of useful information.  They are somewhat akin to attending a John Wesley revival meeting.  We get jacked up, we are challenged, we feel omnipotent, and ready to take on whatever challenges life will throw at us.

Studying leadership is a beneficial and lifelong exercise.  These seminars have their merit.  Being emotionally charged has its merits, regardless of how fleeting.

2.  A second way to learn about leadership is to study the lives of leaders.  I am a strong proponent on reading biographies of great men and women, especially those who have preceded us.  I prefer to study leadership from an historical perspective so that you have the entire body of work to learn from.  Leadership, to be truly effective, must have a lasting effect, and it must end well.  Failure is an important part of developing leadership, but if the summary of one’s experiences is best summarized as one that has failed, I would conclude that we can learn from them how NOT to be a leader, which is also important, but I would rather learn from one who’s overall legacy is one of having accomplished something significant, one that has a positive lasting effect on our world.

In studying the lives of leaders, my personal preference is to go to the original source.  By that I mean read about great men and women and what they have accomplished verses reading commentaries by others who write about leadership using great leaders as examples.

Having said that, I must admit that I’ve read a book or two on leadership in my time, some of which have had a lasting effect on me.  Perhaps the one that stands out as one of the most impactful is Good to Great by Jim Collins.  It has been years since I read that book, but I still strongly recall how Mr. Collins challenged me with the five levels of leadership, and the legacy that one leaves in his or her wake.  And of course there are others.

My wife, LeAnna, and I are in the process of downsizing, and in doing so I chose to donate my entire library to MCC Connections in Kidron.  They dutifully post everything up on e-bay and do very well in reselling used books.  As I was sorting and packing up these hundreds of books, it wasn’t the scores of books on leadership that had left a lasting impact on me – it was the biographies and autobiographies of great men and women that had seared into my conscious and subconscious mind what it is that constitutes a leader, biographies on giants such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Steve Jobs, Teddy Roosevelt,  Henry Ford, and the robber barons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.  My mother taught me never to say anything unkind about anyone, so I will not mention who some of you may perceive as great leaders but that I don’t, whose lives I’ve also studied, primarily to learn, in my opinion, how NOT to lead, leaders that I would describe as peacocks who strut and crow about their accomplishments.

The Book of Proverbs is one of the best books I’ve read on business leadership, and the Bible itself is replete with the examples of great and fallen leaders.  Much can be learned on leadership by studying the Scriptures.

3.  The third, and in my opinion, the most effective way to develop leadership, is to be one.  You can study about leadership all your life and never become one.  You may become an authority on leadership, teach classes on leadership, be a consultant on leadership, but being an authority on leadership does not make you a leader.

When I need technical help on my computers, I don’t allow the technician to touch my mouse or keyboard.  They have to show me what I must to.  Only by doing it myself am I capable of learning.  The same applies to leadership.

Leadership is analogous to driving a car to a complicated place that you’ve never driven to before.  Chances are, if you drive there yourself without using your Garmin, you’ll be familiar enough with the landmarks that you’ll be able to navigate your way home.  If you are a passenger in the car, however, you know that it is virtually impossible to figure out your way back.  Leaders are not passengers; they are drivers.

On a related subject, if you want strong leaders to develop in your organization, you’ve got to leave some oxygen in the room for them to breath.  As I approached sixty years of age, succession planning became an overriding concern.  It became apparent to me that if I wanted my son and son-in-law to take over the business, I would have to get out of the way in order for them to do so.  If the big oak in the middle of the forest has filled up the canopy with its branches, it blocks out the sunlight to the saplings.  If you want the little oaks to grow, you have to chop down the big oak.  I’ve never seen two leaders develop as rapidly as the co-presidents of our company who now eagerly press forward every day without waiting for my approval or consent.

To reiterate, if you want to be a leader, you have to position yourself where leading is your only option.  And there is no perfect time, place, or opportunity to do so.  You simply have to take the plunge, whether it is in business, in the service industry, in the home, in the church, in the community.  I recall the day I came home from work in 1976 when I was building silos for Mast-Leply and calmly informed my wife I was going into business for myself.  We had a one year old daughter at the time, drove a 14 year old car, had no savings, had just completed a three years missions assignment in New York City, but I had this burning desire to make it on my own.  That’s a story for another time and another place.  My batting average initially was probably well below .200 but it went up as time went on.  I learned what it took to be a leader by being one.

Those are my suggestions on how to become a leader.  I would like to take the rest of my allotted time to iterate for you what I feel constitute the seventeen character traits of a leader, in no particular order.

1.  To be a leader, you must be audacious, you must be fearless, and that’s one of the reasons not everyone is a leader.  It is much more comfortable to not stick your neck out, to not take risks, to not attempt the impossible.  It is much easier to listen to the critics that tell you why it can’t be done, to the naysayers that tell you you’re foolish, you’re impulsive, you’re irrational.  Being audacious requires that you develop a strong sense of self awareness, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and then maximizing the opportunities as they are presented to you.  To this day, I still have people question decisions that I make, and roll their eyes when I tell them about my next ambitious plan.  This is a fact of life leaders have to live with.  But it is the non-leaders that doubt you.  Other leaders understand, and support you.

2.  To be a leader, you must be nimble.  Nimble means to be light on your feet, being able to move fast, anticipate the future, be constantly on the move, and pushing, or falling, if you will, forward.  Without alacrity you will drop the ball at the most inopportune time.  I recall exhibiting at the house wares show in Chicago years ago when a chain store buyer expressed some interest in a particular product, and rather than respond with an immediate, clear, and cogent response, I stumbled around, intimidated by the purchasing power of the buyer.  An older, wiser man by the name of Bill Schwarz, was with me at the time, listening to and watching my response.  When the buyer left he turned to me and said, “Peter, you just dropped the ball.”  He was right, and his comments stung.  It reminds me of the verse in Scriptures that exhorts us to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”

3.  To be a leader, you must be opportunistic.  A leader looks for that crack in the wall, puts his shoulder against it, and barges through.  Those that are not leaders see the same crack, and will mention to their friend – “Look at that crack in the wall, that opportunity.”  They see the same crack you do, but do nothing about it.  As I mentioned earlier, opportunities are all around you.  If you wait for the perfect time, the perfect idea, the perfect financing, the perfect place, you’ll never break through.  For an example, just look around you at the number of woodworking enterprises in Wayne and Holmes County alone.  There are well over 300 businesses, many of which are working out of a shed or barn, and yet Holmes County is becoming, or has become, the domestic source for the best hardwood furniture in America. 

4.  To be a leader you must be a visionary.  I quote Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time and nine time Most Valuable Player who was quoted as saying, “I do not skate to where the puck is; I skate to where the puck is going to be.”  A leader must have the ability to dream the dream, to visualize what he or she is hoping to accomplish, and then skate to where the puck is going to be, recognizing that in the process, there will be a number of opposing hockey players doing everything they can to hip-check you over the boards.

5.  To be a leader, you must be passionate.  If you are not completely committed to the goals and objectives of your organization, no one else will be either.  Do what you love, and love what you do. 

6.  To be a leader, it is essential that you empower the people within your organization.   Delegating significant responsibilities to your people will show you trust them.  They in turn will develop trust in you.  Loyalty is a two way street.  Empowering your people is your way of developing leaders within your organization.  Empowering is the opposite of micromanaging; it is the ultimate way of showing respect.  You don’t, nor should you, carry the load all by yourself.

7.  Leadership requires surrounding yourself with people that are better than you, which in some cases such as mine, is not that difficult to do.  A smart leader hires smarter people.

8.  Leadership does not require that you have a formal education or advanced degrees.  I’ve met and worked with people that have a doctorate degree who have difficulty fighting their way out of a paper bag.  Having common sense and being highly educated have little to do with each other.  Do not confuse the ability to learn with being educated.  It is essential that leaders are always learning, but not necessarily in a classroom.  The school of hard knocks is a good way to learn, saves on tuition fees, but is not without limitations of its own.

9.  Leaders must not be afraid to take calculated risks.  Fear of failure holds many back from being more accomplished and attaining higher goals.  It was Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player, who once said “I never missed a shot I didn’t take.”  So many of us are too concerned about embarrassing ourselves by missing shots, rather than concentrating on the returns on the shots we do make.

10.  Which leads me to my next character trait – a leader must be resilient.  When one goes 1 for 10, it is hard to bounce back, but the ability to take a blow and to keep on ticking is essential for those in leadership.   It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, to stick your tail between your legs and shuffle off into the sunset.  This is not an option for leaders.  That is one of the reasons that I love Paul Pierce, a basketball player for the Boston Celtics.  He can go zero for twenty, have an awful game, and yet when they need a clutch shot at the end of the game to win it, everyone knows it is Paul Pierce who will step up, take that shot, and make it.

11.  Leaders must have the fortitude to terminate relationships that are no longer working.    Yes, it is true if you hire carefully you will fire rarely, but it is inevitable that more than once in your career you are going to have to make the tough call and move a person out. 

12.  Leaders do not have to be dynamic, and in fact, it may be a liability.  You can also be an introvert and still lead effectively.  I am thinking of two men I know well in Holmes County, one of whom runs a leather business, and the other a lumber yard.  Both have enjoyed significant success in their careers.  I have deep admiration for both.  The former happens to be sanguine, emotional, outgoing, and gregarious.  The later is a choleric, almost shy, and does not mingle with his employees.  Yet they are both highly respected and admired.  The point being, don’t concern yourself with whether or not you are shy or outgoing.  Neither one is a criteria for successful leadership.  The following is a quotation from Michael Hyatt, a blogger and author who has been involved with Chic-fil-A leadership seminars for years.  “I have seen leaders get prideful, greedy, and demanding.  Sadly, it has increasingly become the norm in a world that values charisma above character.  To paraphrase Jim Collins from Good to Great, you can build an enduring organization with charisma, but it is more difficult.”

13.  Leadership requires sacrifice, not of your integrity, but of your time, and initially, of your income.  Your check will always be the last one to be cut, and there may be times where there isn’t enough cash in the checking account to cover your expenses.  I have a close friend who has been operating her own business for 7 years and is still only paying herself $8.50 an hour, but she is happy as a pig in mud, is an astute business person, and is visionary enough to see that there is a future for her business.

14.  Leadership requires that you maintain a healthy balance in your personal life.  To be consumed by your ambitious goals, to be consumed by keeping up or staying ahead of the competition, to be consumed with increasing your personal wealth at the expense of your family, of your faith, and of your community, comes with a price.  Solomon once said “He made me the keeper of vineyards but my own vineyard I have not kept.”  May this never be said of any of us.

15.  Leaders are directly responsible for the culture of their organization.  If you want to see an extension of yourself, look at the facilities and the people you surround yourself with.  Do you allow graffiti in your facilities?  Do you tolerate messy shop floors and dirty bathrooms?  Are off-color jokes and crass language permissible?  Is there continuous bickering among your staff?  If you find any of this undesirable and wish it were eliminated, I would suggest you take a close look at yourself.

16.  A leader does not need excessive amounts of cash to start a business. I will go a step further by saying having access to excessive startup capital is a liability.  A business needs to grow itself from its own earnings.  A business that is built on excessive cash will rely too much on the cash it has too burn through and not concentrate enough on the earnings that it must generate to stay in business.  Start small.  Be profitable.  Plow the profits back into the business.  Do not rely on OPM (Other People’s Money) or bank loans to start your business.

17.  The primary requisite for a leader is integrity.  Your word must be your bond.  Your customers, your suppliers, your employees all must trust you, and have confidence in you.  Remove any one of those three legs and your chair will tip over.  Under promise and over deliver. 

So be a leader.  Open that local beauty salon.  Start that dry kiln.  Start teaching a Sunday school class.  Join the choir.  Run for a member of the school board, for city council, or state representative.  Go to law school, become a dentist if this is what you want.  Start washing dishing in a local restaurant, and if you go about it the right way, someday you may end up owning it.  Start laying down the paving bricks, one brick at a time.  In the process you will be building up that risk muscle, which in its infancy could barely lift a match stick, but after years of practice, excellence, and due diligence you are able to lift an oak log.

The only one stopping you is yourself.  Stay humble, and through being a good follower become a strong leader!

After losing billions of dollars, in an attempt to stem the tide of red ink, it was decided that hundreds of rural post offices would be closed.  This was a logical decision.  If private industry operates at a loss, cuts are made to reduce those losses.

It was appalling to learn that last week the Postal Service had reversed their decision, and they will now be keeping those post offices open.  They proudly announced that they listened to their customers.  They obviously didn’t ask me my opinion!

If UPS or FedEx were operating the postal service, they would listen to their customers as well, but they would do so in conjunction with watching their bottom line.  Private industry only has one option – stay profitable, or close the door.

The Postal Service continues to reveal their lack of understanding of what it takes to stay profitable.  They indicated that while keeping these nonproductive offices open, they would cut back the hours of the employees working there.  Cutting back hours will never compensate for the costs of maintaining the real estate, paying the electric bills, the rent, and all of the additional costs that go along with keeping the doors of a public facility open.

An expression that is frequently bantered around our shop is take care of the goose.  If you don’t take care of the goose that lays the egg, there won’t be any more eggs.  The customer always comes first, unless the customer is jeopardizing the health of the goose.

We annually assess the success, or lack thereof, of each product in our line.  If a product does not generate adequate sales and profits it is discontinued.  We recognize that in discontinuing some products we may upset some of our customers.  We regret that.  But if we only listened to what our customers wanted, and didn’t mind our p’s and q’s, we could conceivably jeopardize all of the services we offer.

It takes courage to draw that line in the sand and make difficult decisions that we know will potentially alienate some of our customers.  Obviously, our government lacks the courage to make similar difficult decisions.

A couple of years ago, we looked closely at a service we offered, that of making customized products for customers.  It was a service that we had offered for years.  We recognized, however, that while it was making a number of our customers happy, it was a detriment to the overall health of the company.  We closed the department.

If I were managing the United States Postal Service, I would look closely at which storefronts are profitable and which ones are not.  I would close the ones that would be bleeding us dry.

I would stop all rural deliveries on Saturday, and look into closing all post offices on Saturday as well.  On-line banking and e-mails have changed the game plan.

I would look into self-service, which would include adding thousands of dispensing machines for stamps in established retail outlets.  Additionally I would install automated mailing systems similar to options that one has for self checkout at grocery stores.

I would look into competing with UPS and FedEx and see what percentage of that business I could get back.

Bottom line, there is no accountability for profit with a government run business model. There appears to be no incentive to stem losses or to generate profits.

Their inability to hold to the difficult decisions that they had made previously to close offices, their spineless response to the customers that complained, and their inability to modernize the services they offer makes it painfully clear that they should get out of the business of providing this service for their citizens, step aside, and let the private sector take over.

Their keeping the offices open may have pleased the vocal minority that complained, but it has merely added to the tax burden of all as we continue to subsidize the losses they accrue daily.

You can tell by the look on her face that this nonsense has to stop.

With Mother’s Day coming up, the least I can do is write a blog in honor of LeAnna.  This woman has been my anchor, the ballast in my ship, the compass that attempts to keep me on true north, the mother of our four children, and a selfless woman who lives to assure that everyone’s needs are met but hers.

Everything God has blessed me with I owe to her.

Her personal needs have always been minimal.  She lives simply.  Possessions do little to add to her happiness.  For example, she uses this clunky old cell phone that works half the time.  I’ve suggested numerous times that she upgrades to a smart phone, but her reply is predictable:  ”this phone is good enough for me.”

She is frequently complimented on her wardrobe.  Not that it is ostentatious.  Anything but.  But she has this ability to dress attractively, yet demurely.  Drawing attention to herself is not one of her faults.

Over the years she has morphed from brunette to salt and pepper, and now to gray.  She never once considered tinting or dying her hair.  She goes with what God has given her.  Nor is she comfortable with makeup or jewelry.  I agree with her; she’s beautiful the way God made her.

She would never consider a Facebook account.  She has real friendships, not virtual ones. She is a great conversationalist because she had developed the art of listening.

She somehow manages to keep up with the names and careers of everyone in our church.  It amazes me how she will weave into a conversation with parents the names of their children and grandchildren, always out of a sincere interest in their lives.

All four of her children chide her for not having a dish washer.  She simply brushes off the suggestion with a wave of the hand.  She considers dish washers an excess, not to mention a waste of energy.  For forty years she has washed our dishes.  Now that I’ve transitioned, I’ve taken up drying them.  Not that I enjoy it, but it is a task that we do together.

What she loves I have grown to love, and what she hates I deplore.  For example, there are a couple of invasive species on the farm that disgust her – garlic mustard, and vinca, a plant in the ivy family that creates this ground cover that then starts climbing our trees.  It is not a good year to be a vinca, garlic mustard, multi flora bush, bittersweet, or wild grape vine on our farm.  I’ve gone at them all with a vengeance this spring.  Making LeAnna happy is one of my greatest joys.

The converse is also true.  You do not want to get on her bad side.  She is a force to be reckoned with, not one that anyone would knowingly want to stir up.  She is intolerant of anyone that exaggerates and embellishes.  Hyperbole will put one in the dog house real quick.

It amazes me how she continues to fix meals for just the two of us.  The only difference between the meals she now fixes and the meals she would fix for a thrashing crew is the size of the portions.  She uses place mats, washable napkins, and creates flower arrangements for the dining room table.

Although she loves this farm that she was born on, and the one that has been in her family for eight generations, she has indicated that if all the children and grandchildren moved to Orgeon, she wouldn’t hesitate to pack up and join them.  She baby sits Charly Anna, our youngest grandchild, four mornings a week.

Our daughter-in-law, Sommer, loves her dearly.  I don’t know of anyone she holds in higher regard.  LeAnna loves our son-in-law, Joe, as one of her own.

I could start a list of what she does to give back to our community but that would take another blog, suffice to say that weekly she goes to the women’s jail for Bible studies, participates in numerous other church activities, and once a week helps clean restrooms at the business, getting down on her hands and knees scrubbing toilet bowls.

I shudder to think where I would be without her.  I possess a fraction of the common sense that she is blessed with, and the most amazing thing is, that after all these years, she still loves me.

Proverbs 31 does not do her justice.

View of Hong Kong looking south from

Kowloon across the Victoria Harbor.

Having just returned from a ten-day trip to China, I felt it timely to post a blog on how to travel efficiently.

The number one rule of thumb is to build redundancies into your plans.  Whatever can go wrong will.  Healthy paranoia is your best asset.  Be a great horned owl. Have eyes in the back of your head.

1. Double check the expiration dates on your passport and visa a month before you leave.  There is nothing mores frustrating than getting to your gate, have your papers checked by the gate attendant only to be informed you can’t board after months of planning.

Make copies of your passport and visa.  If you happen to lose them, at least you’ve got a head start getting them replaced.

2. I always carry my wallet and my passport in the right front pocket of my jeans. Never anywhere else.  Habits are reassuring.  In heavy pedestrian traffic, I generally walk with my hand in that pocket.  Nothing like the comfort of your wallet and passport at your finger tips.  Pickpockets are everywhere, and falling asleep on the train isn’t safe either.  There is a skilled set of pickpockets that don’t bother to reach into your pocket.  They quietly slash your pocket with a razor-sharp blade, and you wake up later with nothing but a hole in your empty pocket.

I see tourists with passports dangling from a lanyard around their necks and I want to scream.

3. Disgorging pedestrians at the top of an escalator where the crowd at the top is too dense to disperse the crowd is one of the most dangerous places to be trapped.  I once had a camera removed from my hip holster when caught in this predicament.  I realized it 20 seconds later, but what are you going to do when you are surrounded by 2000 people crunched shoulder to shoulder?  I now carry my camera in my shoulder case.

4. I no longer check luggage.  I travel light; very light.  You save the additional fees.  Nor do you have to worry about lost luggage, or waiting for your luggage to arrive 45 minutes after you left the plane.

5.  I don’t travel with a small suitcase with wheels.  I own one of the smallest on the market, but I still had to frequently check it at the gate.  Planes were not designed for all the cargo that now go into the overhead bins.  Boeing will have to address this in future designs.  There is nothing more frustrating than to disembark and queue up behind 75 other passengers waiting for your bag.  You may as well have checked your luggage and pick it up at the carousel.

6.  I travel with a multi-compartment, canvas bag with a comfortable shoulder strap.  If the overhead bins are full, I still have the option of sliding it under the seat in front of me.

7.  With all due respect to my many friends that own bookstores, I travel without any books.  I have over 100 books downloaded on my Kindle app on my MacBook.  I generally treat myself with one new book before I depart on a 15 hour intercontinental flight.

8.  My “toys” are limited to my laptop, iPhone, a set of noise canceling headphones, and a camera.  My newest addition is a small battery charger, which keeps my toys functional for the entire trip.  There is nothing worse than landing somewhere on the Pacific Rim and not being able to make contact with your party while waiting to disembark because your cell phone is dead.

9.  The most frequent item left behind in a hotel room is a charger.  Losing one overseas is sometimes impossible to replace.

10.  Always carry a multi-function electrical adapter that will function anywhere in the world.  Electrical outlets vary all over the world.

11.  Other than a comb, two disposable razors (I’ve long since thrown away that expensive, much hyped four-blade Gillette), toothbrush, 3-ounce tube of toothpaste, and ear plugs, my shaving kit is empty.  If you shower frequently, deodorants are unnecessary and air conditioning is ubiquitous.  The only difference between shampoo and a bar of soap is viscosity.  My hair doesn’t know the difference.  Same with shaving.  A lathered soap bar does the same thing as any shaving foam.

12. Never take a gypsy cab, regardless of how sharp the vehicle or how professional the driver may appear.  He doesn’t have a cab license that you can write down in case you accidentally leave something behind, and there is no guarantee he will even take you where you want to go.

13.  Never get out of a cab without looking twice at the seat where you were sitting.

14. Never drink hotel water.

15. For health reasons  I no longer go through the scanner when going through security.  I ask for a pat down.  It’s not that bad.  They assure you they only use the back of their hand.  Never mutter the word contraband to a TSA agent after you’ve cleared security.  It is a trigger word that could shut down the entire airport.  I know.

16.  Before checking all your gear through security, stuff your wallet and cell phone into a zippered compartment of your bag.  Never leave it lie loose in a tray.  Sticky fingers are everywhere.  Carry your passport and your boarding pass in your right hand.

17.  Eat a good meal before boarding.  The smell of airplane food is enough to make one nauseous.

18.  The very rear end of these new transcontinental jets have a lovely 12-foot long, counter height stainless steel counter, great for standing up while you work.  Stand, exercise, and walk at every opportunity.

What has been your experience?  What could you add to this list?

A fracking well in operation in Williston, North Dakota. Two permits have already been issued for Wayne County.

I wasn’t surprised to read the editorial in yesterday’s Williston Herald addressing the concerns they are having in North Dakota over the truckers in the fracking industry not taking the time to make appropriate use of the latrines, but instead they are reverting to the use of a plastic bottle (referred to as bottle bombs in the article) while inside their cab, which they then throw out the window while barreling down the highway at full speed.

500,000 barrels of oil are currently being extracted daily in the Williston Basin by 210 separate well sites.  The efflux is so great that they don’t have the infrastructure to ship it out.  The Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania has proven to be productive, and now the oil industry is poised to move onto the Utica Shale in our back and front yard here in Ohio.

These drilling rigs are enormous.  They are situated on 5-acre lots.  Each well site costs $7,000,000 just for drilling costs.  Six to eight wells are drilled from the one location.  Once the drill bit reaches the shale at 8,000 feet, the rigs drill horizontally through the shale for an additional mile, each well drilling off in a different direction, to maximize the area within a one-mile radius of the drilling pad.  Water, with a mixture of sand, is then pumped into each well.  The horizontal bores are porous.  The pressure of the water “fractures” the ore, the grains of sand keep the ore from collapsing, enabling the oil to seep back into the well, which is then pumped to the surface.

A schematic of a well drilled by a fracking rig. Note this shows just one of six wells bored from each location, each drilling in a different direction to maximize yield

There has been a lot of talk of fracking in our community.  Apparently the talk has moved to action.

1.  This is a picture I took yesterday of what was the former location of Riceland Cabinet, situated a couple of miles from our farm.  It is now a distribution center for one of the many drilling operations that will be moving into our community.

Home of the former Riceland Cabinet shop.

2.  Financial advisers in our community are working triple time to keep up with the demands from their clients.  Landowners that sign leases with the oil companies are receiving upwards of $5,000 an acre plus 20% of the royalties.  The lease money is pouring into our community, but covertly, as Mennonites and Amish don’t make a habit of discussing their income or their addictions.

3.  Word got out that an Amishman had $93,000 in cash stashed in his home from leasing his land.  $2,500 of it was stolen.

4.  At a recent tractor-trailer event, one business owner purchased 41 tractors to keep up with the demands of the drilling rigs.  Each rig requires 2,000 truck loads consisting of water, cement, sand, and gravel to complete a well.  You do the math on how much traffic, dust, and havoc this will cause on our country roads designed for cars, buggies, and farm equipment.  Asphalt designed to last 20 years will be shredded to rubble in one winter.

Here are some of the ramifications of what fracking will do to our community, if it is anything comparable to Williston.

1.  Our community will turn into a man cave.  RVs and trailers will be parked wherever they can contract with local property owners.  Overnight, sewage disposal truck operations will start up, pumping out temporary holding tanks on these temporary RV parks set up on good farmland.  No hotel rooms will be available within miles.

2.  Populations in local towns will double.  The sewage infrastructures will not be able to cope.

3.  The police departments will be stretched to the max.  The operators that move in to run the trucks and drilling rigs are mostly single men with a high disposable income, looking for action on their down time.  A rough neck was arrested for rape in Williston two days ago.

4.  Divorce rates in Williston have escalated with wives leaving their husbands to live a more glamorous lifestyle with the oil workers and their disposable cash, if you call living in a temporary truck camper glamorous.

A truck hauling water in Williston

5.  Environmental issues would require another blog, suffice to say there have been earthquakes attributed to the disposing of the waste water from the wells in Youngstown, Ohio.  Well water has been contaminated due to mismanagement of waste around the wellheads.

Our farm has been in the family for eight generations.  A few years ago we placed the farm in a conservation easement to prevent future commercial or residential development.  That provides some protection from immediate contamination to the surface of our farm, but no conservation easement is capable of protecting what could occur 8,000 feet below the surface.

It may take two or three years for the scenario that I’ve painted to unfold, but from everything I have been able to deduce, we are well under way.

The rolling hills of this peaceful Swiss community will never be the same.  The thousands of trees we’ve planted over the years and the birding sanctuary we are attempting to create will encounter serious setbacks.

The view from our back yard overlooking the Sonnenberg Valley today. What will it look like 10 years from now?

Don't they look great in spandex?

Our second son Thomas has two dueling passions – his love for Christ and his love for cycling.

Of course, we know where his actual priorities actually lie, but we can’t help giving him a little grief about it now and again.

Rembrandt's painting entitled The Mennonite Preacher Anslo and his Wife, possibly a harbinger of things to come.

Thomas and his older brother Paul share this passion together.  That’s not the only thing they share.  They both have a strong competitive spirit.  They frequently ride together, and they quietly relish the moment when one of them is able to make the other one “hit the wall” – a biking term for running out of gas.  Having been raised by a demure, quiet, and humble Mennonite woman, neither of them are prone to draw attention to themselves, or to the one that has been vanquished, but the truth does come out in a subtle form, one way or another.

Up until this point Paul has had the upper hand due to a number of reasons.  A couple of summers back Thomas came down with mono and it took him all summer to get back into condition.  Last summer he complained that his bike was 8 pounds heavier than Paul’s, a huge disadvantage when every extra ounce is critical.

For the uninitiated, this is the cycling transfer they put on the back of the pickup.

The Orville Cycling Club races every Wednesday evening, a group that Paul has been a part of for some time.  Unfortunately, Wednesday night is when Thomas is responsible for the weekly youth activity at the church.  To my knowledge, he has not had the opportunity to race with Paul with this group, another unfair advantage that Paul has over Thomas.

This summer Thomas picked up a different bike that is the same weight as Paul’s.  From what I’ve been told, it is game on.

After six years of being a youth and associate pastor at our church in Kidron, Thomas is moving on.  Where to, he is not exactly sure.  One thing we do know is that June 10th is his last day at the Kidron Mennonite Church.  He then drives out to Colorado for board meetings, after which he has no current plans for the rest of the summer.

Another decal on the back of the van. Notice the interesting use of the bicycle chain integrated into the logo.

He is driving out there in his Neon, and not just any bike carrier was good enough for him.  He is not just a road warrior, but also a serious off-road mountain cyclist.  This requires two uniquely different styles of bikes, both of which he is taking out with him to Colorado.

He had a friend of ours jury rig a serious bike rack, one that carries two bikes, and also allows him to open his trunk without removing the bicycles.

I understand he won’t be climbing Colorado’s 14,000 footers on foot; he’ll be going up them on his mountain bike.

The conditioning that these guys go through to prepare them for racing is demanding.  They pay strict attention to their diets, especially the day of a race.  What they ingest is critical to their endurance.  What they consume after this race is a different matter.

To keep them from “hitting the wall”, while riding they ingest a viscous substance called goo.  It comes in tubes which they squeeze into their mouths while riding at full speed.  I understand it is high in sugar, providing much needed instant energy.

the goo dispenser.

Thomas is considering attending a seminary this fall to pursue his M-Div.  Which school he will attend has not been decided yet.

Six years of working with youth has provided for him an excellent background in ministry which will stand him in good stead as he looks to continue to serve others while serving the Lord in some capacity, probably in a pastoral position of some kind.

The church will need to be forewarned that cycling will continue to be high on his priority list, but at the same time be assured that it will not be a distraction, but rather an enhancement to his future aspirations.

Note the custom welded trailer hitch on the back of his Neon - not exactly your Grandfather's bike rack.

He is the kind of accountant all small businesses would die for.  He is uniquely suited to guide business owners through the shoals of today’s economy.  Here are just a few of his character traits that we have grown to appreciate.

1.  He is not in a popularity contest with anyone in our organization.  He does not hesitate to call people out for poor decisions or inappropriate comments.  More than once he has taken me to the woodshed.  Rather than resent him for it, I’ve grown to respect him.

2.  He is genuinely concerned with our family, recognizing it is inextricably tied to our business.  Before making major decisions, he will sit down with us as a family and walk us through what he feels is in our best interest.

3.  Because he has been in public accounting for more than thirty years, there isn’t much he hasn’t encountered.  In addition, he does an excellent job of staying abreast of the continuously changing playing field called the IRS, and advises us accordingly.

4.  Mike takes the place of a board of directors.  I would not work well with a board.  They tell you how to run your company.  Entrepreneurs like control.  They think they have all the answers.  Mike, however, will mercilessly pound you until you have no choice but to listen.

5.  Mike has a long-term commitment to our success.  He has weathered the highs and lows with us.  It would have been easy for him to walk at times, but he has never shown an inclination to do so.

6.  There are experts that specialize in succession and estate planning.  We’ve been courted by a number of them.  We never used one.  Mike walked us through my stepping aside, and instituting the new regime that now runs the operation with an iron fist, with their top priority being that of treating me like a mushroom, keeping me in a darkened closet, thoughtful enough to open the door once a week to spritz cold water on me.

7.  Consultants of every ilk have pounded on our door.  We actually listened to a few of their pitches, but we never contracted with them.  We have Mike.

8.  Mike has sat on the board of numerous banks.  The dance of a banker and a business owner can be complex and delicate at times.  Mike advises us on how to negotiate with banks while maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with them.

9.  Mike is a person with a big heart.  He invests emotionally with his own staff.  He also invests emotionally with his clients, at least the clients that he likes, and it is apparent that he likes us.

10.  Years ago, we figured out that if we called Mike on his cell phone we circumvented an automatic billing process from phone records on his landlines.  Mike takes personal calls from us any hour of the night or day, and does so cheerfully.  Don’t be fooled, however, into thinking that Mike is a pushover.  He knows how to bill out his services, and at times we reel when we see his statements.  And we have complained, but it has never altered out commitment to him.

11.  Mike is a real person with a pulse.  He rides a Harley, has a safe or two filled with a collection of around 70 guns.  He’s a turkey-hunting specialist.  He’s a borderline redneck.  He loves to go snow mobiling in Michigan, where powerful snowmobiles on iced over rivers reach speeds of 140 miles per hour.

12.  On occasion I’ve bellyached about paying too much in taxes.  He has chided me for this.  He says that we’ve got it all wrong.  We should complain about not paying enough taxes.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times.  The only person you should trust with your money is yourself.  If there were an exception to this axiom, however, Mike would be it.  After all, if a Lutheran can make it in a den of thieves like ours, the world’s largest Amish-Mennonite community, he can make it anywhere.

The windmill that pumps the water situated between the laundry and farm house.

The world is seldom presented with an inside perspective on the lives of the most conservative group of Amish, commonly referred to as the Swartzentruber Amish.  One of the reasons for that is that they seldom allow English (their term for everyone that is not Amish) into their homes.

The dirt driveway.

Sam and Mattie have been friends of ours for going on twenty years.  Sam used to work for us until the church requested that he move back to the farm, and in hindsight, it is a good thing he did.  It has enabled him to be the much-needed father and husband on the farm.

Sam and Mattie now have nine children, six boys and three girls.  They purchased a 60-acre farm 11 years ago which has at least tripled in value since then.

My blog will only allow me to hit the highlights of their lifestyle as I deliberately keep my posts brief.

Think back to Laura Ingalls Wilder. This would approximate their lifestyle.

The hub of daily activities on the farm.

They use no electricity, no cell phones or landlines, no cars, no TV, no computers, and eschew graveling their driveways.  Their income is derived primarily from the land.  They plow their fields with a team of horses and a one-bottom plow.  If they can plow two acres a day, they and the horses have put in a good day’s work.

From the fields they harvest oats and corn for the cows, horses, chickens, hogs, and goats.  The hay is cut with a horse drawn sickle.  After it has dried, they haul it loose into the barn where a huge two-pronged hook pulled by horses unloads the hay.

The Jersey cows are milked morning and evening, 365 days a year.  The young children, starting at four years of age, help with the milking with a child sitting on each side of one cow pulling on their pair of teats.  Mom and Dad also milk and coordinate the activity.  The milk check provides a steady income.

Where Mattie makes and mends most of the clothes.

Mattie is kept on her toes with the oldest boy, Harvey, 16 years of age, and the youngest just over a year old.  She churns her own butter, makes her own bread, butchers her own hogs, and cans produce from the garden, and makes most of their clothes.

Ice is purchased each winter from nearby ponds and stored in a shed insulated with sawdust, providing refrigeration.

Because they are unable to cool the milk from the cows with electrically powered cooling tanks, they are forced to sell their milk each day at a lower price to a dairy that uses it for milk related products such as cheese and yogurt.

Where all the meals are cooked, and also a furnace for the winter months.

Water is pumped from the well by a windmill, after which it is stored in a cistern behind the house.  The hand pump in the house and in the laundry pumps water from the cistern.

The children walk to school each day.  The one room schoolhouse is located about a mile away.  They attend until the eight grade.

The children start working away from home as soon as they are out of school but only at businesses that are within a horse and buggy distance from the farm.  They do not accept rides with the English under extenuating circumstances.

When Sam left us, after working with us for eight years, we researched with him the intricacies of basket weaving.  We found suppliers for the veneer, nails, molds, and the assembly horse that the baskets are woven on.  The children have grown up weaving as well.  Their income is supplemented by the basket sales.

The wood-fired water heating system for baths and washing cloths.

They read the Bible and pray together as a family before starting each day and before retiring at night.  They offer thanks for their meals before and after eating.  Their choice of separation from the world is based on the Scriptural admonition to “come out from among them, and be ye separate, says the Lord” (II Corinthians 6:17).

They consider photographs of people as a violation of the second commandment that forbids having “any graven image before Me, says the Lord” (Exodus 20:4). You will notice that the pictures I have included do not include pictures of any family member.

“As much as is possible, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18) is a principle they live by.

The next generation of milk cows, the Jersey heifers.

We count it an honor to be surrounded by Amish families such as Sam and Mattie.

The first picture ever taken by Sam - with me honing up on skills I developed years ago.

The hysteria they have created is more of a critique on the lack of ambition and a desire to improve one’s lot in our society than it is a reflection of the abuses in China.

The 3.4% unemployment in Hong Kong combined with an 8% annual economic growth rate is not the result of a 35-hour work week and two month summer vacations which, in Europe, has become de rigueur.

The media betrays their lack of understanding of the life of a Chinese factory employee.

1.  The workers are migrants.  Where they work is not remotely close to their homes.  More often than not they live a jostling, two day, non-stop train ride from their homes.

2. They live in stifling factory dormitories that are seldom air-conditioned, many of which are located in the tropical coastal south.

3.  I would approximate the average age of the factory worker to be in their early twenties.  They are strong, healthy, ambitious, and most of them are single.  If, given the choice of holing up in their dormitory room designed to accommodate 6, but instead houses 12, or opting for additional work, their choice is obvious.

4.  Many of the migrant workers come from the family farm where the work is done by hand.  The estimated hourly income from working on the farm is 25 cents.  Working in a factory, they are paid close to $2.00 an hour, an 800% increase.  The goal of many is to work and save for five years before retiring to the family farm, most of which are a half acre or less.

5.  The Chinese are not prone to complain.  Over the millenia they have learned to adapt.  They accept the cards they are dealt.  They share an overwhelming optimism that life will improve.

6.  There are factors at work that are corroding the underpinnings of their society, factors that will have devastating affects in generations to come, but the 60 hour work week in not one of them.

I think back to when I was in my late teens.  Dan Pullium and I worked in the sawmills of British Columbia.  We lived in trailers, slept in bunk beds, and ate our meals in the mess hall along with 50 snoose-dipping Swedes.  We were as happy as a pair of great blue herons standing all alone in a stagnant marsh surrounded with spring peepers when we were offered overtime.  We felt slighted if we didn’t get it.  Due to a shortage of help, on one occasion I worked on the graveyard shift from Wednesday evening  straight through to the graveyard shift on Saturday morning, stacking lumber off the green chain.  I didn’t consider it abuse then, and I don’t consider it abuse now.

I have many close friends who are farmers.  A 60-hour work week is a walk in the park for them.

Many of the shops in our community owned by Amish and Mennonites advertise in our local papers that their hours are 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.  They’re just getting started at 60 hours.

Many of us have been involved in starting and managing our own businesses.  A 60-hour work week was something we lived with for years.  It went with the territory.

Amy Chua, the Chinese author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, wrote candidly about the upbringing of her daughters.  She took a pounding from the press for her candor in pushing her children to excel.

There is conjecture that in less than 20 years the gross national economic output of China will exceed that of the United States.  Perhaps our vehement objection to the 60-hour work week is but one of the reasons we will continue to fall further, and further behind.  We’ve lost the willingness to word hard and make sacrifices.

Amazon and the theme parks recognize the advantages of this symbiotic relationship and comp the RVers with free RV parks, all hookups included, for those that chose this lifestyle.

Meanwhile, Amazon, within the last month or so, purchased a manufacturing company that makes robots.  They plunked down $750,000,000.  They didn’t buy the company as an investment.  They are looking to replace their employees that currently stock the shelves and pull product for order fulfillment, all with robots, with little regard for their current employees, and with no thought for the RV folks.

I then read that Google is actively working on replacing truck drivers with computers.  They are experimenting with innumerable cameras placed all around the truck, which relay vital information to a computer network within the truck.  It will then be remotely controlled through satellite systems.  The truck will start, backup to loading docks, and drive as long as their fuel tanks allow, as I understand they have yet to figure out how to pull into the fueling stations and remotely fuel up.

I’ve only addressed the jobs that are being replaced domestically by automation.  Can we talk about the number of manufacturing jobs that have been lost to third world countries, primarily China?  Foxconn, for example, employees upwards of 1,500,000 Chinese producing computers and computer components for worldwide consumption.

The company that could provide remarkable leadership in helping to restore the American economy is Apple Computer.  They have built their war chest of $500 billion in cash on the backs of inexpensive labor in China.  In so doing, they have additionally gutted America’s infrastructure needed for electronics, and developed that entire platform in China.

Lord knows, they have the margins.  An IPad retails for $500.  The hard costs for building one is $161.

Steve Jobs was a proponent of reality distortion.  He convinced himself, and all of the people surrounding him, that anything was possible, even if it required a little distortion of reality.

Reality distortion does have its downsides.  It was what lead to his untimely demise, as he felt  he could cure himself with his mind-bending tactics rather than follow the advice of the doctors.

It is time to bring jobs back to America, and Apple Computer, without Steve Jobs at the helm, would be a great place to start, applying the upside of reality distortion principles to resurrect electronic domestic manufacturing.  Their stock would take a hit initially, and part of their $500 billion would be plowed back into the American economy for start-up operations, but over time they would create a remarkable success story, even if their margins were not as obscene as they are now.

They like to think green at Apple.  Do the math on how many millions of gallons of jet fuel would be saved making computers in the US of A.  Apple transports most of their finished goods from China by air.

Their marketing department would have a heyday exploiting this.  The nightmares that they currently face over the abuse of labor in China would go away, and their percentage of the worldwide market share would increase from the goodwill generated.

America deserves better than being reduced to a service economy.  We do not need to live in a post-manufacturing world.  We have proven that we can compete in the automotive industry.  Think Ford. We can compete in the electronics industry as well if given the opportunity.

We simply need a heavily capitalized company such as Apple to lead the way, and leave the government out of it.