Why millennials matter

Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Gazette weekly column, “On Topic,” from 05-24-15
I considered starting out like this:
How many millennials does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Who knows — none of them stick around long enough to finish the job … .
But lately, after spending most of my working day with those frequently maligned millennials, I’ve concluded it’s probably past time for managers to rethink the validity of that view.

Opinion: ‘Gatsby? What Gatsby?’

Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Gazette weekly column, “On Topic,” from 05-26-13
As we were coming out of a showing of the Baz Luhrmann-directed movie “The Great Gatsby” — the latest in a line of movie versions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel — we passed a clutch of older-than-middle-aged women, and one of them sighed to her friend, “I was hoping for a happy ending.”
Really? Did you not read the book in high school? You didn’t see that tragic conclusion coming a mile off?
But it occurred to me that maybe she was disappointed by this latest cinematic “Gatsby” — just as a number of movie critics, too, have been, well, critical — because they’re missing the point.

Opinion: Look, up in the sky — it’s a bird …

Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Gazette weekly column, “On Topic,” from 11-20-11
Everyone wants a piece of Wilbur and Orville Wright, even Cedar Rapids.
You might recall a squabble a few years back over automobile license plates. North Carolina’s otherwise innocuous 1983 plates carried the slogan, “First in Flight.”