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About John B. Marek
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Blog postYou could make the case that fall is the most aptly named season, what with leaves and temperatures both falling, but from where I sit, calling the season we are now in “spring” is just as appropriate. One day things are brown and gray, and then, BOOM, everything springs into shades of green – the Green Bang. Of course, that green is accompanied by an eighth-inch thick layer of yellow pollen on everything, but that’s life in the Carolinas.
The first time I ever visited Charlotte wa -
Blog postLast week’s Field Notes started with an anecdote about a shrine to the Virgin Mary, and this week’s starts with a tale about another shrine of sorts. In February 1989, the technology startup where I was employed, Fox Software, was acquired by Microsoft. A handful of the top-level managers and programmers were transitioned to Seattle, but the majority of the workers, myself included, were offered a token severance and sent on our way.
Just a few years out of college with a w -
Blog postMy grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday at the small, tumbledown house where she raised 10 children. There was a huge store-bought cake (a rarity in my mom’s family of proud bakers) with a decorative plastic crown in the middle holding a single candle. After the festivities had ended, the various family members got in their cars to return home. Since we lived just a few miles away, we were the last to leave. The remnants of the cake had been wrapped and put in the fridge for Grandma to enjoy
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Blog postI Site selection consultants, when asked about the most critical factor determining where a business locates, invariably say, "workforce." While this is undoubtedly true at some level, I think most local developers would point out that during the initial search, product, not workforce, is more typically the crucial factor. If a community does not have the site or building a company requires, they will never have the opportunity to promote the quality of their workforce. A build
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Blog postIf you’ve spent any time around young children, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “but that’s not fair!” It turns out they have a point. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I was invited to a birthday party for a schoolmate named Donald. Donald was not a close friend of mine, but somehow I was invited anyway and showed up for a rousing Saturday afternoon of cake, ice cream, and age-appropriate games. While I’m sure we played a couple of different ones, the game I recall is Hi-Ho Cherry
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Blog postRegular readers (and thanks both of you!) know I started college at Ohio University but graduated from Bowling Green. While both are fine academic institutions, they are pretty different. Ohio U is a cluster of classical brick buildings nestled amongst the rolling hills of southeast Ohio, while Bowling Green is an eclectic mix of architectural styles rising starkly from the windswept plains of northwest Ohio. Perhaps the most significant difference, though, at least in my day, was the food. Bowl
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Blog postWoody Sports Entertainment announced today that Wadesboro, N.C., has been approved as the newest franchise in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL). The team, which will be known as the Anson Loggers – a nod to the region’s forestry and wood products industry – will begin play for the 2022-23 season at the new Peaches ’n Cream Ice Arena in Wadesboro. The SPHL currently has teams in 11 cities across the South and Midwest, including the Marksmen in nearby Fayetteville. “We’re especiall
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Blog postAt some point in our lives, most of us have been either the victim or the perpetrator of a prank phone call. Most of these calls are harmless. Many are legitimately funny; some are mean-spirited, and a select few are dangerous. In college, some of my buddies and I would call a random number pretending to be from a fictitious sports radio station. We would ask a nonsensical question to (supposedly) win a prize. One question I specifically recall was, “Name the three teams in this year’s Sup
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Blog postFifty years ago this week, my mother and I attended a basketball game at the high school gym in my hometown of Port Clinton. Of itself, that wasn’t an especially noteworthy event; mom was a big sports fan, and we regularly went to high school football and basketball games, often with my Aunt Marge and Uncle Junior. This game was different, though, because it didn’t feature high school teams. It was a contest between Port Clinton City Schools faculty and the Cincinnati Bengals. Yes, the football
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Blog postA few years ago, I wrote a magazine article about Banana Republic, the real safari-clothing Banana Republic of the 1980s, not the upscale Gap that has appropriated the name. In that piece, I mentioned one iconic BR item I still own, the Israeli Paratrooper Briefcase. To quote the catalog description: “When called away suddenly on business (to Entebbe, for example), it can be hard to organize paperwork. To cope with the kind of bureaucratic entanglements that accompany international brin
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Blog postDie-hard baseball fans have known for a couple of years that a significant restructuring of the minor leagues was coming this season, pending a renegotiation of the master agreement with the majors. It was understood that 40 or so of the less-viable teams would be contracted, with each Major League team claiming one squad in Triple-A, Double-A, High-A, and Low-A for a total of 120 minor league affiliates. There was also speculation about a geographic realignment of the leagues to reduce travel c
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Blog postFor most of my elementary school years, my father worked second shift, what he called “three-to-’leven,” at the U.S. Gypsum plant down the road from our house. It probably wasn’t his first choice, but it paid a few cents more per hour than first shift, and at least it wasn’t third shift. On three-to-’leven, he could still live a fairly normal life, sleeping at night and awake during the day. Occasionally, my mother would let me stay up on a Friday night until he got home. It was an adventure to
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Blog postThe human brain has a fantastic ability to find patterns and connections in seemingly unrelated things. This ability has given us mathematics and engineering, taken us to the moon, and found cures for many of the diseases that plague us. But it also occasionally sees patterns and connections that aren’t there, makes us vulnerable to fakes and frauds, and fuels ridiculous conspiracy theories. My father was an avid reader, but his choice of reading material often left a little to be desir
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Blog postThe inclement weather the past couple of days relegated me to working in the garage, so I decided to “tune up” my bicycle for the spring. I replaced the tubes, tire, and brake pads last year, so all I needed to do was lube the chain and make a few minor adjustments. In truth, I do this more out of habit than necessity. These days, I probably ride that bike 50 miles over the course of a year. It wasn’t always that way. During my past couple of years in Ohio and my first few years in North Carolin
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Blog postThis month’s Popular Mechanics features an article on the “science of making low-alcohol beer.” It turns out low-alcohol and no-alcohol beers are gaining popularity as craft brewers jostle for position in a crowded market. The less-alcoholic brews appeal to young, health-conscious drinkers who see them as lower-calorie options with less impact on their active lifestyles. Craft brewers have devised methods for making products ranging from .5 percent to 4 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) that are a
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Blog postWhenever I drive into Anson County from the west on U.S. Hwy. 74, I pass a derelict Radio Shack sign in front of the Food Lion plaza in Marshville, and my thoughts meander in two directions. First: Wasn’t that kind of a strange place for a Radio Shack? Second: Whatever happened to Radio Shack? My first experience with “The Shack” came in 1977. I was groping around for an interesting school science fair project when I came across an article in Popular Mechanics describing how to build an “old-
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Blog postLike most boys growing up in Ohio in the ’70s, I was obsessed with football. As one of the least athletic humans ever born, I knew there was no way I would ever be able to play the sport on a meaningful level, but that didn’t stop me from slinging the ball around my backyard. Sometimes when my nephews visited, I had live targets, but I was usually just throwing to lawn chairs I had set up to simulate receivers or kicking field goals off a tee. I even had a “stadium” of sorts. My mother’s clothes
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Blog postThere's really no reason to send those plants you use to decorate for the holidays to that great compost bin in the sky. Most of them make great year-round houseplants, and with a little care can provide many years of enjoyment. In this week's Field Notes column, I discuss ways to keep them standing tall into the new year.
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Blog postIn this week's Field Notes column, I discuss fundraisers. I remember selling fruit for my high school band, and Catholic Christmas Seals for, well, I’m not quite sure why they were sold. But I do recall earning a coveted lucite cross and a Virgin Mary statuette.
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Blog postMany years ago, I had a consulting firm and landed what I thought would be a fun gig: helping turn around a struggling small used book store. It was an opportunity for me to prove that – unlike in the movie "You've Got Mail," (pictured) – a boutique bookstore could compete with a mega-bookstore like Barnes & Noble. The gig did not go well, however, and I learned a lesson: The saying, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” might be true for some, but a corol
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Blog postI ponder a deep question in my Field Notes column this week: Does the nature of beauty itself change, or is beauty an immutable equation? To answer that question, we need to make a distinction between attractiveness and beauty. Click to read more about an issue that has been pondered since there have been navels upon which to gaze.
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Blog postI will be offering a special free ebook promotion through my Amazon Author Page starting Friday, November 27th, and running through Monday, November 30th. My Kindle Short-Story Single “White Crow,” usually 99 cents, will be free to download. www,johnbmarek.com
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Blog postThis week in my Field Notes column, I look back on the days when my shoes came from a place called Flippen's. Not most of my shoes, mind you; all of my shoes. The store, and others like it, earned that loyalty by doing things like sending gifts to customers who were sick. Well, time passed and my family eventually took our business to a shoe outlet store in the interest of saving a buck. Things did not go well. At all. Read about it here.
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Blog postCOVID-19 has put a damper on typical live author events like signings, readings, and workshops, but in a sense, it has also opened up opportunities for “garage band” authors like myself to expand their reach beyond a “reasonable driving distance.” Where doing a virtual event would have seemed weird six months ago, today even A-list writers are participating in Zoom readings, mail-in signings, and Facebook workshops. Some authors are even resorting to guerrilla marketing tactics to bring r
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Blog postI was pleased to offer few words today at the official opening of Loba-Wakol’s new North American headquarters in Wadesboro, N.C. Loba-Wakol announced in May of 2019 that they would be moving their HQ from Charlotte to the Anson County town. The company looked at more than 65 buildings in the Charlotte region before choosing Wadesboro, according to Ashley Carter, Loba-WakolNA COO. The company, a leading supplier of adhesives and finishes to the wood
and resilient flooring industry, began
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