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On a recent visit to Washington, D.C., I called Morton's The
Steakhouse to make a dinner reservation. "Oh yes," said the person who answered
the phone, "Mr. Orfalea has dined with us before." My excellent customer
service radar started to tingle. It's nice to be remembered.

When we arrived, restaurant manager Dan Festa greeted us.Dan personally welcomes all of his guests and lets everyone know that his jobis to take care of us. Attentive service and excellent food rounded out myevening, and...

Some of the upscale thrift stores along Melrose Avenue in
Los Angeles organize their used clothing by decade. Browsing through the racks,
one sees that the items from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are vibrant, daring,
and in surprisingly good condition. They were obviously very well made. One
also notes that nearly 100% of these shirts, dresses, skirts, jackets and pants
were made in the USA.

Watching , Ithought about how lucky I was to grow up...

Dean Zatkowsky was surprised to learn this week that his
ophthalmologist could have written Dean's new book, .

Dr. Ona Shiroyama's office is near the site of Kinko's
former corporate offices, and it turns out that many of our coworkers were -
and still are - patients of Dr. Shiroyama.

During the course of his eye exam, Dean mentioned he hadwritten a book about Kinko's. The doctor expressed interest, and said she'dnever ...

As an owner of rental properties in a college town, Iwitnessed a significant economic trend before the general population saw it.About ten years ago, students stopped installing landline phone service intheir apartments. Soon after these students graduated, phone companies saw arapid decline in the overall number of landline phone customers. Many peoplestill have dsl lines for Internet use, but

A story headlined "," in the October 10th issue of The Economist suggests that instead of declaring banks "too big tofail," we should recognize such institutions as "too big to run." The storynotes that many ousted bank executives seemed to have no idea what went on inthe numerous divisions ostensibly reporting to them. "Bank of America's assetsare now ten times those of Exxon Mobil, America's most valuable firm. A balancesheet of $2.3 trillion is beyond the ken of mere mortals."

M...

Public education supporter
notes that during their first 260 years, public schools played a very narrow
role: "they were created to teach basic reading, writing, and arithmetic
skills, and to cultivate values that serve a democratic society (some history
and civics implied)."

Then, in the twentieth century, society started asking moreand more of the public schools. . It includes the addition ofnutrition, immunization and health to...

A friend jokes that his wife is a slave to their coffee
maker, which emits five beeps when the coffee is ready. Between the first and
fifth beep, his wife can cover any distance to the kitchen, however engrossed
she may have been in a book or conversation before that first beep.

He finds her Pavlovian response a daily source of amusement,but I've seen what happens when his phone alerts him to a new email or textmessage. At the sound of the beep, he stops whatever he is doing and checks...

by Laurel Anderson, Youth & Schools Manager, The Orfalea
Foundations

Schools set a good example for students when they apply new
knowledge in practical ways. We have learned, for example, that rescheduling
recess just before lunch improves the
eating habits and classroom behavior of children, providing a better
environment for learning, and builds better habits for healthy kids.

Several Santa Barbara schools have acted on thisinformation, including Washington Elementary, Franklin Elementary...

One of my
goals in life is to help young people develop the habit of seeing opportunity.
Following are some thoughts on this subject, excerpted from my book, .

See with Your Own Eyes

Seeing for
myself is an important theme in my life. Good readers collect other people's
words; tend to see things for themselves. Who is more likely to
repeat the ideas of others, and who is more likely to be creative?

Because I...

Everywhere I go, people seem concerned over an apparent
decline of ethical standards, particularly among the young. They cite polls in
which a high percentage of college students admit to cheating on tests (which
suggests a much higher percentage actually cheat). 

I'm not sure most of these students are unethical so much asnon-ethical. So many decisions have been made for them, they've never given thereasoning behind those decisions much thought. Today's parents schedule everyminute of a...