Category: Leading People

Happy Friendship Day

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Mark Twain

Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards, initiated “Friendship Day”—a day for celebrating friendships by holiday celebrations—on August 2, 1930.  Friendship Day was met with consumer resistance, given that it was too obviously a commercial gimmick to promote the sales of greeting cards. By the 1940s, the holiday largely died out in the United States.

However, it has been kept alive and revitalized in Asia.  In honor of Friendship Day in 1998, Nane Annan, wife of the UN Secretary-General at the time, named Winnie the Pooh as the world’s Ambassador of Friendship at the United Nations.

Some countries, including India, celebrate Friendship Day on the first Sunday of August.  So, Happy Friendship Day!

In honor of the day, I’m offering a summary of John Maxwell’s Be A People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships.

Click here to continue

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

National Ice Cream Day 2019! (L to R): Cat, Cody, Brady, Katy, & Evan

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day.

In his proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

So, I took Katy along with her boyfriend Evan and Cody along with his girlfriend Cat to celebrate at Baskin-Robbins (pictured above) while Jennifer and Tanner spent an extra day tubing on the Frio River in Concan, Texas with family friends.

Speaking of ice cream, I recently read The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do by Subir Chowdhury.  The author is a respected quality strategist and Chairman and CEO of the world leader on Six Sigma and Quality Leadership implementation, consulting, and training. Hailed by the New York Times as a “leading quality expert,” Chowdhury is the author of twelve books, including the international bestseller The Power of Six Sigma, which has been translated into more than twenty languages and has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Click here for my summary of The Ice Cream Maker