Looking to the Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Scotland, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was overheard referring to the global all-talk and no-action as “irritating”. I grew up with British understatements so I knew that meant total disgust mixed with a few expletives. The Queen was irritated by folks who don’t walk-the-talk and was probably left speechless by how many American leaders gloss over our growing climate crisis. Continue reading Our climate crisis is now – by Deborah Levine→
The banning of books has been around for centuries and America is no exception. We have banned books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We banned 273 books in 2020 with more to come. But don’t the recent controversies over school library books seem a bit irrelevant to you? After all, we’re online 24/7 and the influence of books seems pitifully modest. Unless authors have a huge following on Tik Tok and Twitter, students are unlikely to storm classroom libraries. So why the brouhaha?
Some folks cried Death to Facebook while others turned to Twitter during the FB Blackout. Entertaining tweets welcomed newcomers and entertained us longtime Twitter-ists. “Is that (outage) before or after injecting bleach into the CPUs and shining a UV light in all the network ports?”Others referred to ads aimed at young women, “… if Instagram is down, who’s gonna constantly try to convince me that my life would be better with lip injections?” I laughed at the tweet suggesting we rename it “social NOTwork” but sighed at hopes that we’d return to a pre-2000 culture. Not gonna happen!
These days, everyone I talk to sounds anxious, scared and miserable. My first reaction is sympathy and empathy, the way my mother taught me. My second reaction is relief, since misery loves company.And when I feeling a bit guilty for that, I say to myself, “How can we not be?” Every time, I turn on the news, there’s another calamity. It feels like our world isimploding and none of us will escape unscathed.
First there’s a sense of world disintegration with the mess in Afghanistan. Seeing thousands of folks trying to cram into the airport to leave – scary. Watching people clinging to planes to get out – horrifying. Hearing the fears of women for the future – words escape me.
Our kids are in the COVID crosshairs. In July, 38,654 pediatric Covid cases were reported. Just a week later, that number increased 85 %. When today’s youth look back on this Covid era, I wonder what they’ll say. They might say that the delta variant might have been deterred if vaccinations had been embraced immediately. They may ask why it took so long to authorize a Covid vaccine for children.
Deborah Levine Receives 2021 Chattanooga Award for Management Consulting
CHATTANOOGA August 22, 2021 — Deborah Levine has been selected for the 2021 Chattanooga Award in the Management Consulting Services category by the Chattanooga Award Program.
Each year, the Chattanooga Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Chattanooga area a great place to live, work and play.
Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2021 Chattanooga Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Chattanooga Award Program and data provided by third parties.
About Chattanooga Award Program
The Chattanooga Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Chattanooga area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.
The Chattanooga Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.
Chattanooga Award Program Honors Deborah Levine:
Diversity Consultant and Editor of the American Diversity Report
CHATTANOOGA August 22, 2021 — Deborah Levine has been selected for the 2021 Chattanooga Award in the Management Consulting Services category by the Chattanooga Award Program.
Each year, the Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Chattanooga area a great place to live, work and play.
Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2021 Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Chattanooga Award Program and data provided by third parties.
About Chattanooga Award Program
The annual awards program honors the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Chattanooga area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.
The Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.
If you’re the richest person on Earth, your next step might be to launch yourself into space. That’s what Jeff Bezos has done. I guess this planet is just too boring to invest in. Maybe that’s why his company, Amazon, paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 4.3 % on U.S. income, even when Trump’s administration dropped the rate to 21%.Continue reading Offshore billionaires launch into space – by Deborah Levine→
Attempts to bring our diverse society together is nothing new. Controversies and road blocks surrounding the attempts aren’t new either. It may seem that way to some folks with furious debate over “structural racism”, but it’s the terminology that’s new, not the reality.
Our language has struggled over decades to find ways to express the mission of inclusion without creating a nasty backlash. Back in the day, Multiculturalism was supposed to heal disparities. It did not. Then it was Diversity. That didn’t resolve much and Diversity & Inclusion became popular. Not a major game changer, so we went to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to address structural disparities. Has DEI had the desired results in the community, workplace, university, or any place? I’m not convinced. Continue reading Words shape us for better or worse – by Deborah Levine→
There hasn’t been much noise from the climate change deniers this week despite data showing that there are 109 congressional representatives and 30 senators, who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. That’s 25% of our federal elected officials including Tennessee’s Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Congressman Chuck Fleischmann.
Maybe the silence is due to the unprecedented heatwave in the West and Southwest. The photos of livestock roaming brown fields with no grass might encourage the deniers to lay low. Not to mention the pictures of Lake Mead. If you’ve ever toured Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam you know that this symbol of American scientific innovation built during The Depression was a stunning tourist destination well as providing drinking water and farming irrigation. Today’s situation leaves the water level at its lowest since the 1930s. You can now see the stone walls of the lake and we’ll see even more in the coming months.
Each year, the Chattanooga Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Chattanooga area a great place to live, work and play.
