I ordered some new business cards recently and they arrived in the mail yesterday and they sure brought back memories of long ago. It was in February, 1961 in Battle Creek, Michigan and I’d given up alcohol and purchased an old Underwood Typewriter. 

There’s a very seductive trap that people often fall …

Over 26% of all Americans do some kind of volunteer work during the year.  With our current economy there are more needs to be met than ever and a greater need for volunteers.

The above quote from actress Geena Davis says it all …

We have not exulted about the decisions of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly regarding the Social Statement on Human Sexuality and the change in ministry policies. We have been mindful that there were sisters and brothers in Christ who were pained by the decisions, and we wanted to treat their pain with the respect it deserved.

That was the weekend that was and I doubt that I will ever forget it. With my host, Dan Hornak, I visited the Mayberry festival held at Mt. Airy, N.C. and I shook hundreds and hands and posed for so many pictures that my upper lip was numb from all that smiling.

Art Fettig – When is the last time you climbed out of your shell? I said your shell, not your rut. Your shell, if it is anything like mine, is that place I climb into when I am fearful of a new situation.

I have a Distinguished Service to Safety Plaque from the National Safety Council dated 2002 and the metal plate fell off of it. I took it to the frame shop for advice and then stopped over at a friends repair shop.

Abraham Lincoln was reported to have said, 1.You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

I first met Sue in Atlanta when I worked with her husband, Richard, while I was doing some speeches for Alabama Power there.

“The secret of success…is making your vocation your vacation.” – Mark Twain As I read this quote I started looking back on my career and I can honestly say that I did just as Mark Train suggested many years ago.

Recently when Korean golfer Y. E. Yang absolutely whomped the one and only Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine he said, “I tried to visualize … how to win if I ever played against Tiger.”

I had another of those phone calls yesterday. It began like most of them do, “Art, I heard you speak ten (or fifteen or twenty) years ago and you talked about positive interaction. You persuaded our entire work force to sign a commitment to safety and we have signed that commitment again and again each year pledging to look out for our own safety and the safety of our fellow worker.”

YPSILANTI, July 27, 2009 – Eastern Michigan University has named Walter Kraft as its new vice president for communications, pending approval by the Board of Regents. The appointment is effective August 10, 2009.

It seems like most of the work I do lately ends up on a pile some where.  Some of the things that used to take me an hour now take me a day or even two.

It takes real courage to work in the safety field. Sometimes resistance is coming at you from all directions at the same time. Here is something I wrote some time ago in my book Serenity! Serenity! Living the Serenity Prayer.

People don’t do what you tell them to do, they do what they see you doing and if you don’t like the way your children are turning out then take a look at yourself. Remember when you point one finger at them you have three fingers pointing right back at you. Don’t like the way your teenagers are driving and smashing up your cars? Take a good look at your own driving, after all you have been teaching them by your example for years.

Right now, nobody seems to be happy with President …

In the very early seventies I started working with a noted psychologist from Notre Dame University to learn more about employee behavior.  I was trying to figure our why we had such a rotten safety record and what we might do about it. 

On May 26, 2009 the California Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding the constitutionality of Prop 8 which bans gay marriages in the state. Soulforce of Colorado held a nonviolent direct action that same afternoon to protest the ruling and also remind Colorado that marriage equality does not exist here either.

For years now I have been saying that for every negative thing that happens there is an equal positive force if you can only find it.  Well, today I read that GM is closing over a thousand of its dealerships

Two dogs, 3 and 6 months of age, were presented with painful, swollen shoulder and carpal joints; reluctance to stand; and pyrexia. Radiographs in both cases revealed an irregular lucent zone in the metaphysis of the proximal humerus, parallel and adjacent to the physis.

We’ve known for nearly a century that the better you treat people, the harder they’ll work. It’s a pretty straightforward relationship. This being the case, it seems logical to conclude that the job of every team leader, supervisor, manager and executive should be to treat their employees as well as possible so they become excited about coming to work and applying their best efforts toward performing their jobs every day. Unfortunately it turns out that such behavior is the exception rather than the rule.

I wrote a song with the above title and as I was listening to it I had the thought today, “Just what is too long?” Is there a certain time in your life when you should give up on a dream and let it go? What if that dream comes back again and again throughout your lifetime? Should you pay any attention to it? What I am learning as I get older is that the real joys in life come in the journey. Reaching your destination is always a sort of a letdown.

Art Fettig – I wrote a song with the above title and as I was listening to it I had the thought today, “Just what is too long?”

Sunday we drove over to a beautiful little mountain village named Cashiers, in the Blue Ridge Mountains discovered the Laurelwood Mountain Inn.

Whenever the President nominates someone for an important position in government the Senators get their bird dogs out and they start searching for any paper trail the candidate might have left to be exposed in hearings.

Tribute to an Amazing Lady February 12, 2008 – …

University Lutheran Church, Tempe, Arizona

I can remember the day I heard my first professional speaker giving a talk for our railroad group in Battle Creek, Michigan. His name was Herb True Ph.D. and that same day he put me on his team as a humor writer.  That meeting changed my life. 

A moment of truth is an opportunity to come through when the people around you don’t expect you to. I was on a Hertz Rental Car bus in Chicago one time when a pregnant woman traveling with three kids and six suitcases was about to get off.

Some relatives of mine, Dick and Lucille, own and manage a hardware store in a small town in Michigan.  The hardware store they own is part of a chain of hardware stores that specializes in serving small communities.

Art Fettig was certified as a “Speaking Professional” in 1980 by the National Speakers Association. He is the veteran of some 4,000 professional presentations in all 50 of the United States, 8 Canadian Provinces and a number of foreign countries. He is a prolific author with 35 books including many children’s books.