Recent News Nuggets

This is the time of the year when retail clerks catch a lot of undeserved verbal abuse from the people they’re trying to serve.  Stores are crowded, people are in a hurry, check-out lines are long and tempers are short.  Under these circumstances, a kind word or gesture from you can brighten a retail clerk’s day.

Art Fettig – We’d experienced a memorable cruise of the Caribbean and we were spending a few days in San Juan.

What if you woke up tomorrow morning and discovered that you were running for the high office of President of the United States? Would you find yourself going “Daaa” or maybe you would discover a growing line up of unhappy women accusing you of improper behavior ten or twenty or maybe in my case sixty-five or more years ago.

If you asked me what the best investment I ever made, I would have to say it was the $12 I paid to take the Christopher Leadership Course back in 1957.

Art Fettig – When I was a kid growing up in Michigan there was a radio show I sometimes listened to and it began with that above statement.

Last week, a fair number of you got a kick out of my …

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This past Saturday, I was trimming shrubs around the pool. I was a little stressed because I wanted to finish the job that afternoon. As I walked around the corner of the pool to get a trimmer, I lost my balance.

Most of us are aware of campus ministry alum Ian Lee and his work reporting for  CNN and Fox on Tarhir Square, Egypt.  He has since gone on to Libya to work for Time magazine and CNN.

Evan Moilan was our Campus Minister for several years. Wife Heather was one of our students and a member of ULC.  Their current community of Bastrop, Texas was devestated by recent fires in Texas.

…unhappiness in our lives. Art Fettig’s …

Art Fettig – Did you ever notice how some people seem to be involved in just about anything that needs doing? Whether it is at work or church or the schools their children attend, they just have a habit of saying “yes”.

Are you the kind of person who does only what is required or have you developed that remarkable success habit of always adding a little more to your efforts? It is like the frosting on the cake, the real cream in the coffee . 

In North Carolina this just might become known as The Great Storm Of The 21st Century.  

While many New Year’s resolutions such as losing weight, getting organized or expanding your horizons can be difficult to follow through on, here’s one that isn’t: be kind. All you need to do is smile and say something positive to the people you come into contact with.

The entire audience was hissing the speaker except for one man. He was applauding the hissing. Does this sound like your last safety meeting? Oh, if this could have been your last safety meeting, but no, there is another one staring you right in the face.

Art Fettig – At a big Trade Show recently a fellow came up to me and said, “Hey Art, I understand that you are involved in safety.  I wanted to meet you.”  And POW! I was off and a runnin’ down the track again just like a race horse. 

Art Fettig – No, I didn’t ride in that beautiful red Lamborghini.  The seat is almost on the floor of that beautiful car and I figured it would take a crane at least to get me out of it. One strong man managed the job. Instead.

Art Fettig – I’ve never been a fast learner but lately I have the feeling that my capacity to learn some things has come to a screeching halt. It has. I am making a valiant effort to learn to talk Southern and for this old Yankee it sometimes seems too much. I feel like Elizabeth Dolittle in My Fair Lady. walking around the room saying “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

Art Fettig – This seems like a fitting time to thank everyone who helps me knock out this newsletter week after week after week.

Art Fettig – I’m in here at my computer early this morning so that I can send it off and get over to the library book sale in Chapel Hill. I had to promise my wife that for every book I brought home today I would get rid of at least one book from my office.

Art Fettig – Did you ever go to describe something to somebody and as you did so you got a whole new look at what you were describing? 

Art Fettig – I found a penny on the ground as I was taking a walk the other day. I seem to find a lot of pennies lately.

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.

Art Fettig – Courage—That stuff of which Heroes and heroines are made. God, I need a ton of it And more for what I must soon do.

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 …

Hermon Goring – Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

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.

Ross Reck – Nothing good ever comes out of negative comments.  They make you, the sender, look bad to the people observing your behavior.  They also make the receiver feel bad.  If you regularly dish out negative comments, don’t expect any of these people to give you their best efforts the next time you ask them for a favor.