Hey, you know that Executive Communication Report I write every Friday that you should subscribe to immediately because it's full of useful information and it's free?
Well, in this Friday's issue appears the following yarn—which you would already have read had you listened to my earlier entreaties to subscribe—cribbed from Roger Ebert's Journal*. Journalist and Ebert pal John McHugh remembers an early job with an outfit called "Arab Pest Control, crawling under houses and spraying around bug poison."
"It must be hot down there," she says. "Wouldn't you like some nice cold lemonade?"
I say I would. I stand up through the trap door but don't climb into the kitchen because I'm all covered with sweat, dust and cobwebs. She pours me out a nice big glass from a pitcher from the icebox. Then she calls her little boy into the room.
"Junior," she says, "you take a good look at that man. If you don't study hard and go to college, that's what will happen to you."
* Reading Ebert's blog—he appears to be using it in part to compile a memoir—you'll be astounded to discover what we've known in Chicago for years: Ebert's lovely writing style and good-humored intellect can handle a hell of a lot more than movies. And now that Studs Terkel is gone, he's as close as we've got to a living literary saint.
The Ebert story reminds me of a great TED talk by the host of the show Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe. If you haven’t seen this, you must watch it. It will give you new respect for working people everywhere. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
Fantastic, Ron. Thanks for the steer.