Mr. Clean

One of the substitute teachers that I run into occasionally is a man who bears a startling resemblance to Mr. Clean, who looks like the picture below:

We are all familiar with the product itself, since it was first introduced to the public in 1958, and it has had remarkably few changes since that time. There are now 9 variations of the original multi-purpose liquid, 6 versions of the original spray (including 3 versions of “clean freak”), and a “magic eraser”.

https://www.mrclean.com/en-us

What you probably did not know, though, is that the smiling “genie in a bottle” has its origins in the shipping industry.

The all-purpose cleaner was originally formulated by Linwood Burton, a marine ship cleaning businessman with accounts throughout the east coast of the United States and his friend, Mathusan Chandramohan, a rich entrepreneur from Sri Lanka. In the past, ships had to be cleaned using abrasives or solvents that were able to cut successfully through embedded grease and grime. However, past solvents were so dangerous to workers that Burton was motivated to finding a solution that was effective and less caustic. Burton, with fundamental knowledge in chemistry, developed Mr. Clean in an effort to clean ships without having to pay significant premiums in disability claims for his workers. He later sold the product to Procter & Gamble in 1958.

Mr. Clean made his television commercial debut in 1958, initially portrayed in the live-action versions by character actor House Peters Jr. Within the first six months of the introduction, Mr. Clean became the best-selling household cleaner on the market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Clean

House Peters Jr. is probably the most famous man that you have never heard of. His acting career spans from 1935 to 1966. and includes 79 movies and 14 television shows. Strangely enough, he was never listed in the credits for any of his roles, which makes him the most famous man that you’ve never heard of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Peters_Jr.

Many of us resemble famous people, often without our knowledge. I’ve had people tell me that I resemble either Steve Martin of High Hefner, and you may also resemble a famous person as well. From this point forward, though, I will ALWAYS think of Mr. Clean when I run into my fellow substitute teacher.

Diversity

If you had to guess which city in America was the most diverse, you’d probably pick one of the cities in a liberal state, like New York and California.

Surprisingly, you would be wrong.

The most diverse city, per square mile, in the entire country is in Georgia, which would be considered a “red” state, with a Cook partisan voting index of R+5.

The most diverse city in America is a town called Clarkston, and it is located a little north and west of Atlanta. It’s not very big, with only 7554 residents, but the local high school has students from 50 countries, a local mosque has 800 worshippers, and half the population is from outside the United States. The city is noted for its ethnic diversity, and is often referred to as "the most diverse square mile in America" and "the Ellis Island of the South."  In the 1990s, refugee resettlement programs identified Clarkston as a good fit for displaced persons of many backgrounds.

Clarkston is located in Georgia’s 4^th political district, which is a strong Democratic district (Cook partisan voting index of D+24).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkston,_Georgiae

So, the question is, why is diversity so important?

People who live in a diverse community tend be “open minded” about a variety of topics. The folks that live in towns that aren’t are far less likely to accepting of other points of view. Mesa, Arizona, for example, is the largest suburban city by population (508.958 people) in the United States. Due to the fact that the population is 83.8% white, it has been rated as THE most conservative large town in America.

Clarkson, of course, has a fair number of refugees, which makes it a more attractive place to live. Since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation, and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. From 2005 to 2007, approximately 40,000 refugee seekers per year were accepted into the U.S., compared to about 30,000 per year in the UK and 25,000 per year in Canada. The U.S. accounted for about 10% of all refugee-seeker acceptances in the OECD countries in 1998-2007. The United States is by far the most populous OECD country and receives fewer than the average number of refugees per capita: In 2010-14 (before the massive migrant surge in Europe in 2015) it ranked 28 of 43 industrialized countries reviewed by UNHCR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_the_United_States

For most of our history, immigrants from other countries have been a source of conflict, which led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Immigration Act of 1924.

More recently, it resulted in the Muslim ban of 2017.

The 2^nd most valuable company in the entire world, by market capitalization, is Apple, Inc. One of its founders was Steve Jobs, whose biological father was  Abdulfattah "John" (al-)Jandali, who was a Muslim born in Syria.

The 4^th most valuable company in the world is Alphabet, Inc., which is the parent company of Google. One of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin, immigrated from the Soviet Union when he was 6 years old.

America has long been known as a “melting pot”, and no city exemplifies that better than Los Angeles. Los Angeles is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States, and with a population of over 3 million residents, it is obvious that there are a lot of languages being spoken. English is the most regularly spoken language in the United States, but there are 224 other languages that are spoken in Los Angeles, which can make it easier for non-English speaking expats to get acclimated. 

If your neighbor doesn’t look like you, or has a different background,  welcome them anyway. As the French say “ vive la difference” !

the art of the deal

I’ve always marveled at how remarkable our brains are. As a kid, I found it fascinating that my dad could remember his high school Latin, which he learned 50 years earlier in his lifetime.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that my own personal warehouse of obscure facts holds a LOT of information. I can still name many of my teachers and classmates from grade school, which I graduated from in 1961.

Another mystery is why songs or people from long ago suddenly materialize out of the clear blue, and for no apparent reason.

It happened again this morning.

During the period of time that I worked for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, it was purchased by the American Express Company. Like many corporate takeovers, it caused some anxiety among its executives. One of them, at the time of the merger, is alleged to have said, “ Since the merger, I sleep like a baby. I wake up crying every couple of hours”.

Not long after the merger, the chairman of the American Express Company came to Milwaukee to present details of the merger with the Wauwatosa branch of Fireman’s Fund. His name is Sanford Weil – and he is the guy that popped into my head this morning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_I._Weill

During one of the breaks in the meeting, I found myself standing less than 10 feet away from him, and I could actually feel the POWER of the man by his body language.

He spent his entire career in the investment industry. His first two clients were his mother and an ex-boyfriend of his wife, but it took off quickly from there. Over the years, he was associated with numerous well known investment firms (including Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Shearson Lehman Rhoades, American Express, and Saloman Inc.)

In 1998, he was the chairman of the Travelers Corporation, but wanted to merge with Citicorp. However, since the 1927 Glass-Steagall Act prevented mergers between insurance companies and investment firms, he lobbied a number of prominent business and political figures (including Gerald Ford) to repeal the act – and he eventually succeeded. By 2012, he was having regrets:

"What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not too big to fail," Weill said on CNBC. "If they want to hedge what they're doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that's going to be mark-to-market so they're never going to be hit.

Today, he is 86 years old, but still very active, although his interest for the last 20 years of so has been philanthropy. Since 1998, he and his wife (who he married in 1955) have given hundreds of millions of dollars to a wide variety of causes – but he is still worth more than $1 billion.

If you carefully read his biography, you’ll quickly realize that they guy REALLY knew how to make a deal.

He is a sharp contrast to Donald Trump, who has literally been a failure at everything that he has done – including his current position.

Trump: The Art of the Deal is a 1987 book credited to Donald Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz. Part memoir and part business-advice book, it was the first book credited to Trump,^[and helped to make him a "household name". It reached number 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for 13 weeks, and altogether held a position on the list for 48 weeks. The book received additional attention during Trump's 2016 campaign for the presidency of the United States. He cited it as one of his proudest accomplishments and his second-favorite book after the Bible.

Schwartz called writing the book his "greatest regret in life, without question," and both he and the book's publisher, Howard Kaminsky, said that Trump had played no role in the actual writing of the book. Trump has personally given conflicting accounts on the question of authorship. Schwartz later suggested that the work be "re-categorized as fiction"

In addition to “Art of the Deal” there are 28 additional books that are attributed to Trump.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/676.Donald_J_Trump

In total, there are 136 books either by, or about, Donald Trump on Goodreads, and I’ve read at least a dozen of them.

Trump has had 6 bankruptcies, numerous failed businesses, two failed marriages (so far), and the political experts have ranked him as the worst president in the history of our country, but he is VERY GOOD at one thing – and that is selling books.

THAT’S where he knows how to make a deal!