Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

There is a mysterious camera in your brain that will click and capture a poignant scene from time to time. You know what I’m talking about: random moments that you can vividly recall, but you’re not sure why.My awareness of that camera has been heightened and brightened in recent days as I feel a chapter of my life coming to an end and a new chapter about to begin.I’ve sure you have felt what I’m talking about.Phil Johnson explained these uneasy times of transition 40 years ago when I was in the middle of one. He said, “Roy, you’re in an elevator and the door is closed and that’s always an unsettling time. You’re not sure whether the elevator is taking you up to a higher floor, or down to a lower one. You know only that when that elevator door opens, everything is going to be different.”*Click* went the camera in my brain.Then he looked encouragement into my eyes as he said, “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” As we began walking toward our cars, he finished by saying, “Marcus Aurelius wrote that note to us 175 years after Jesus was born.”*Click*Phil Johnson passed away in 2019, just 5 days before his 97th birthday. You will find the last words he spoke to me emblazoned across the 12-foot-high bookcases that hold the thousands of books he left to me in his will. “You acquire an education by study, hard work and persistence. But you absorb culture by viewing great art, listening to great music and reading great books.”The moment that heightened and brightened my awareness of the elevator I’m in was a 521-word text sent to me by Pennie’s sister, Pam. That text contained the complete lyrics of Billy Joel’s song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Nothing else.If you have been reading these Monday Morning Memos for any length of time during the 29 years and 9 months that I’ve been writing them, you won’t be at all surprised that Indy Beagle and I sprang into hot pursuit of the liquid-fast rabbit that leaped out from Pam’s mysterious text.To those of you who are new to rabbit chasing, the objective is not to catch the rabbit, but only to let it lead you to places you might never have otherwise discovered. Uptight people will say that Indy and I are wasting time. But those people will never meet Calvin and Hobbes.When Indy and I lost sight of the liquid-fast rabbit, an unsettled teenager said to Billy Joel, “It’s crazy to be my age. You didn’t have this kind of stuff going on when you were growing up. Nothing really happened back then.”Billy went home that day and listed more than 100 major worldwide events that occurred between the day of this birth in May, 1949, and the day of that teenager’s visit in 1989. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was a birthday gift Billy Joel gave to himself on his 40th birthday in 1989.If you click the image of Indy Beagle at the top of this page, you will be transported to a secret page featuring two different YouTube videos of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Each of those videos will show you the more-than-100 different people and events that Billy Joel is singing about 35 years ago.And now you know why we call those hidden pages, “The Rabbit Hole.”Indy said to tell you “Aroo.”I’ll tell him you said “Aroo,” too.Roy H. WilliamsSeven-hundred-thousand Americans per year submit a trademark application, but Andre Mincov says that number is far less than it should be. Prior to beginning his global consultancy specializing in trademarks, Andre worked at a law firm helping companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and Dell file and defend their trademarks. Today Andre rescues small and mid-size companies that failed to file formal trademarks, or that forgot to file them for all their brands. Listen and learn as Andre explains the most common trademark pitfalls and how to avoid them. Where else but MondayMorningRadio.com?

Learn how to lift a company to new heights by uncovering Untold Stories and overcoming Limiting Factors. Dive into the world of Interesting Characters, Emotional Environments, and the true goal of ad writing. Discover the power of emotional connections with customers and the significance of honesty, transparency, and dedication in business.

How to Shear a Sheepby Barbara KingsolverWalk to the barnbefore dawn.Take off your clothes.Cast everythingon the ground:your nylon jacket,wool socks and all.Throw awaythe cutting tools,the shears that bitelike teeth at the skinwhen hooves flailand your elbowcomes up hardunder a panting throat:no more of that.Sing to them instead.Stand nakedin the morningwith your entreaty.Ask them to come,lay down their woolfor love.That should work.It doesn’t.I lectured them into the night, many hours past my bedtime, telling them how to continue the dazzling success of their father. He was there, listening, nodding his head, making sure they would never forget this night.He and I have worked together since 1989, when we were both very young and our sons were very small. Today he is a rich and famous jeweler in a well-known city. I am the man 500 miles away who writes his ads.His hard-working sons listened intently when I said, “People you trust and admire; people who care about you and your success, will come to you, pull you aside, and tell you with deep concern, ‘You need to change your advertising. You’re not doing it right.’ People who studied advertising in college; friends who feel certain they know what you should do, will say to you, ‘You need to change your advertising. You’re not doing it right.'”I told the sons of my friend about the heart-piercing lessons I learned as a young ad writer. I told them about the clever things I did that I knew would would, had to work, were certain to work, that didn’t work.I told them about all the clever things that I was taught, and trusted, and believed, that didn’t work.I told them about the millions of dollars of other people’s money I had wasted year after year on ideas that didn’t work.And then I told them what I finally noticed, and watched, and understood 35 years ago. I told them the counterintuitive truth that I finally had the eyes to see.I told them what always works. I told them why it never fails to work. And I told them why no one who sees it working ever believes that it will work.Their father nodded his head up and down. The four of us looked at each other and smiled.And then I went home to bed.Roy H. WilliamsPS – “How to Shear a Sheep” is just one of the many delightful poems in a little-known book by the legendary novelist, Barbara Kingsolver. If you haven’t read her novels, you should.Danny Heitman, during the Covid lockdown in 2020, published this book review in The Christian Science Monitor:“Barbara Kingsolver is best known for her novels, including ‘The Bean Trees’ and ‘The Poisonwood Bible,’ and her essay collections, such as ‘Small Wonder’ and ‘High Tide in Tucson.’ She’s not as well known for her poetry, though she should be. ‘How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)’ collects her best poems from the past few years. It’s a tonic for these pandemic times, reminding us of Robert Frost’s definition of poetry as a ‘momentary stay against confusion.’ Kingsolver’s poems are like that, though their clarity is less a matter of sudden revelation than the slowly ripening insight of age. The title poem, with its ironic parenthetical promise that we can learn to soar after ‘ten thousand easy lessons,’ sounds a winking dissent from all those how-to bestsellers that offer quick mastery of life’s essentials in a handful of effortless steps.”Like I said, I really like Barbara Kingsolver. – RHWRebecca Davison was a banker – a financial advisor to multimillionaires – who went on to build a global following among female entrepreneurs, many of whom are important business leaders. Rebecca teaches them how to earn more money, but that’s not what makes them love her. Like many of you, Rebecca can feel what others are feeling, and she uses this ability to help people experience spiritual and monetary abundance through the development of their intuition: that inborn ability to communicate with the universe. Roving reporter Rotbart – ever the investigative reporter – says, “Whether or not you buy into the notion of metaphysical pathways to success, there is no denying that Rebecca’s methods are delivering results for a lot of people.” It’s happening, and it’s happening right now, at MondayMorningRadio.com

The dew lies softly on the green grass and the sunrise is golden in the early morning sky. I come upon an unspoiled mirror of water. A smooth pebble leaves my fingertips. Yes! I land my pebble perfectly in the bullseye! I watch a concentric circle of ripples reach the edge of the pool and bounce back to the middle where they collide.I wander on.Who knows why we do what we do?I was contemplating Quixote, that strangely enchanting character created by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605.But what was happening across the water in 1605?Having a keyboard at my fingertips, I took an early morning walk backwards-in-time to see what was happening in America while the tormenters of the Inquisition were torturing the innocent people of Spain and wooden blocks were stamping the first edition of Don Quixote onto paper in Madrid.1607: Jamestown, the first permanent settlement by Europeans was founded on the shores of what would later become Virginia.1610: John Rolfe realized he could introduce the tobacco of the Native Americans to the people of Europe. Praise God! This would be the crop that would provide the income that would sustain our little colony on the sparkling shores of this brand-new world.1615: Miquel de Cervantes writes Part Two of Don Quixote, and more characters are carved into wooden blocks to stamp ink onto paper in Madrid.1619: Four thousand Europeans agree to work as indentured servants for a few years in the tobacco fields of Virginia if someone will loan them the money for passage across the Atlantic and give them fifty acres of their own. Among these 4,000 men are Anthony Johnson and 19 other young men of Africa. Each of them work in the tobacco fields to pay off the loans for their passage, then each is awarded 50 acres of his own. Anthony Johnson later becomes successful enough to pay for the passage of 5 more Africans to help him work his land.1650: Thirty-thousand people are working in the tobacco fields of Virginia, including about 300 Africans. Everything seems to be running smoothly and everyone is prospering.1654: Edmund Gayton writes the first commentary in English about Don Quixote. The book is published by William Hunt in London, titled, “Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot.” Later that same year, slavery is introduced to North America when Anthony Johnson convinces the court of Northampton County that he is entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor. This would be the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime.As I return from my morning walk, I discover catastophic chaos raging in the pond, the unintended consequences of a pebble tossed. The ripples that bounce off the shores of the pond result in unintended collisions and consequences as all sense of symmetry disappears.Some people say only about 3,000 people were executed by the Spanish Inquisition. Other people say it was more like 30,000. No one has ever claimed it was 300,000. But the pebble of tobacco tossed by John Rolfe killed more than 100,000,000 people in the 20th century alone. We can only guess at the number killed by lung cancer and emphysema during the previous two centuries. Tobacco continues to kill about 8 million people a year.The pebble of slavery tossed by Anthony Johnson resulted in the subjugation of millions of innocent people in America for exactly 201 years. And the waves of that storm continue to crash upon the beach 161 years after the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.Anthony, Anthony, Anthony… why did you throw that pebble 370 years ago?Anthony, if you are listening, please know that you are remembered as a hardworking and successful man who lived with his loving wife Mary for more than 40 years and was admired by everyone. You have been called the patriarch of a very successful community of 300 African-American families who prospered in Virginia during the days when America was new. But after you died in 1670, your plantation was not inherited by your children, but was given to a white colonist when a judge ruled that you were “not a citizen of the colony” because you were black.As I finish my early morning walk backwards-in-time, I hear in my head a sad sigh, and the voice of Kurt Vonnegut saying, “And so it goes.”Yes, Kurt, and so it goes.Roy H. Williams“Never quit on your worst day.” That’s Lesson #1. It’s easy to remember and it’s valuable advice. But the story behind lesson #1 is what makes the lesson magical. Lesson #2 is equally insightful. “You can’t score goals if you’re not on the field.” Phebe Trotman retired as a soccer superstar to become a superstar business coach. The characteristics required to lead a championship soccer team are identical to those required to lead a championship team in business. Phebe Trotman is about to tell young Maxwell Rotbart everything he needs to know. Listen in, and Win! MondayMorningRadio.com

You look at life from a unique point of view.I do, too.Each of us is trapped in our own perceptual reality.“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”You and I may look at the same thing but see it differently. And that little girl over there, yes, that one, sees things differently than either of us. The woman standing next to that little girl has experienced things you and I will never experience, and her reactions to those things have changed her and formed the person she is today. She is trapped inside her own perceptual reality, just like you and me.“Is there a way out of it?”Out of what?“Out of the perceptual reality in which each of us is trapped.”When you modify your perception, you modify your reality.“Explain.”When you listen carefully to an honest person who doesn’t agree with your beliefs, you understand that they experience things differently than you do. And that is when your perceptual reality is modified, and your mind is expanded.“What you are describing is relativism. I believe the facts are the facts, and the truth is the truth, regardless of what you choose to believe.”But would you agree that things are often different than they appear to be?“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”Sometimes we trust facts that are not facts. And even when our facts are correct, the complete truth is usually far more complex than it appears to be on the surface.“I reject that statement. Facts are facts, and the truth is never complex; it is always plain and simple. An honest person who doesn’t see the truth has simply been misinformed.”I respectfully disagree.“Then you have been misinformed.”It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),that each by observation, might satisfy his mind.The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall,against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl:“God bless me! but the elephant, is nothing but a wall!”The second feeling of the tusk, cried: “Ho! what have we here,so round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear,this wonder of an elephant, is very like a spear!”The third approached the animal, and, happening to take,the squirming trunk within his hands, “I see,” quoth he,the elephant is very like a snake!”The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee:“What most this wondrous beast is like, is mighty plain,” quoth he;“Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree.”The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said; “E’en the blindest mancan tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can,This marvel of an elephant, is very like a fan!”The sixth no sooner had begun, about the beast to grope,than, seizing on the swinging tail, that fell within his scope,“I see,” quothe he, “the elephant is very like a rope!”And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!“Okay, so what’s your point?”Each of the six blind men saw a different elephant, but every one of those six elephants was far more complex than it appeared to be on the surface.“But if the blind men had taken time to gather all the facts, they would have seen the truth of the entire elephant.”That’s true.“Well, that’s what I do. I gather all the facts, and then I see the truth.”You are to be congratulated on that. You are a very special individual.“Thank you.”The rest of us suffer from availability bias and confirmation bias.“What are those?”Availability bias is the result of not having all the facts available to you. When you come to a conclusion based on the facts that are available – and you are unaware that other facts exist – your conclusion will suffer from availability bias. Think of it as a kind of blindness.“Well, I’m certain I’m not suffering from availability bias. My sources of information are rock solid. Beyond dispute.”I’m sure they are.“What is the other one?Confirmation bias.“What’s that?”Confirmation bias is the result of agreeing with information that confirms your belief, and discounting information that conflicts with your belief.“I’m certain I’m not doing that. I use deductive reasoning.”Excellent! Then you know that deductive reasoning requires you to seek out information that might disprove your belief, as you try with all your might to prove that your belief is wrong.“Who does that?”Scientists do that. At least the real ones do. Deductive reasoning is the basis of scientific method. The job of a true scientist is to work as hard as they can to disprove what they believe. And when they cannot disprove it – and no one else can disprove it – only then will it be tentatively accepted as reliable.“But don’t normal people just use common sense?”Yes. Inductive reasoning is when you look at all the facts that confirm your suspicion and then pronounce your suspicion as the truth.“But wait. That would be confirmation bias, wouldn’t it?”You are correct. And like I said earlier, you are to be congratulated; you are a very special person.Roy H. WilliamsWould you rather (1.) fight a massive wildfire requiring the evacuation of more than 20,000 people, or (2.) bootstrap a start-up, with no outside investors, that will sell an untested app? Clive Savacool has successfully done both. Battling blazes for 25 years turned out to be excellent preparation for extinguishing the many firestorms faced by entrepreneurs. Listen in as Clive tells roving reporter Rotbart how both of these jobs taught him that the key to leadership is to understand human behavior and motivations. A fascinating interview awaits you at MondayMorning Radio.com

A weak ad attempts to make too many points, and none of them very powerfully.A weak ad is a bloated little porcupine.A great ad drives a single point through one side of your house and out the other with all the momentum of a freight train. A powerful ad is a charging rhinoceros.The world is covered in porcupine ads. They waddle slowly across your television screen. They crawl out of your radio like termites. Their dead carcasses are displayed on billboards along the highways. You stumble over them wherever you go.If I paint an unpleasant picture, it is because porcupines are annoying little rodents.But a charging rhino is a wonder to behold. It makes us stop what we’re doing and pay attention. A rhino pays no attention to the hall monitor who wags his finger and scolds, “No running in the hall!”And that really pisses some people off.Chris Torbay wrote a charging rhinoceros radio ad that makes a single point, very powerfully. I told you about it a few weeks ago, one day after it began charging across the sky from the tops of radio towers in Florida.The ad features a woman who works at an insurance company:My name is Michelle, and I work for Chapman Insurance. I work in the call center answering the phone. What kind of job is that you’re thinking? Well, when it’s your call, maybe I make a difference for you. Maybe you were dreading another one of those stupid corporate phone things with their “press one” and “press two” and “press six if a palm tree just fell on your dog house.”[Now Michelle starts to become emotional, getting increasing wound-up as the ad progresses, until she finishes with thundering pride and deep conviction]But you get to talk to a person, and you get to tell a real person how worried you are. And I get it, because I’m a real person, and I do this for a living. And I can see your policy and answer your questions because I know how confusing this can be!! And when you hang up, you feel like someone with a heart and a soul, and a pretty awesome understanding of insurance has had the basic human decency to answer the phone and talk to you like a person instead of making you press six!!! My name is Michelle. I work with Chapman and your insurance call matters to me!!!!Does it surprise you that the insurance company has had multiple complaints about that ad?It makes a single point:“Business phones should be answered by knowledgeable people who can give you accurate and immediate answers.”Rhinoceros ads always get complaints.Chris Torbay has a younger brother named Mick Torbay who lives in Toronto and rides a rhinoceros everywhere he goes. Mick and I had lunch yesterday with Kyle Caldwell of Atlanta and Ryan Chute of Halifax. Mick said,“When I unleash an ad, there is a specific number of complaints I’m looking for, and it isn’t zero.”The rest of us nodded our affirmation.The majority of people love to see a rhino put on a show. They love rhinos because rhinos are never boring. Porcupines are boring.The rage of the tiny people who are shouting at Chapman Insurance are mostly business owners who are using those abominable “press one” and “press two” machines instead of having the basic human decency to answer the phone and talk to you like a person. You can see now how that ad could make them angry, right?Porcupine lovers are prickly, and easily aggrieved, and quick to call and shout,“Your ads are terrible! You’re not doing it right! You should hire a professional who knows how to talk about features and benefits and price and selection and value and convenience and how long you’ve been in business, and all the awards you’ve won, and say the name of your company at least 7 times in the first 30 seconds. You need to find an advertising professional who knows how to make your ad sound like an ad!”Like I said, porcupines are annoying little rodents.Roy H. WilliamsAfter 16 years as a wedding photographer, Ryan Erickson decided he was barking up the wrong tree. He was making money, but he no longer had a passion for his work. So Ryan decided to try his hand at fine art photography, and now he’s thinking of going nationwide. His clients love how his fine-art portraits accentuate the subtleties of faces, especially the eyes. Ryan brings his state-of-the-art equipment to his clients in a mobile studio, but the most unique aspect of Ryan’s service are the free belly rubs he gives to each of the retrievers, shepherds, bulldogs, beagles, and other canines who pose for him. “It’s so much easier and enjoyable working with dogs,” Ryan tells roving reporter Rotbart and his co-host son, Maxwell. Today’s episode is going to the dogs! MondayMorningRadio.com

Efficiency experts say you must plan your work and work your plan. And you must have written goals and a budget and a schedule.A detailed plan is the key to success when you are doing something small, but you cannot have a detailed plan when you are doing something big and new and untried.You know a project is small when all the variables can be known in advance.When you do something big and new and untried, you will come to a place that your plan did not foresee. This is when you must improvise. Later, you will discover that you are making decisions at the last moment, because that is when you have the most information.Possibilities are in your mind. Reality is at your fingertips. So get started. Move. Take action. Do something.Clarity, commitment, and continual improvement are what you need most when doing something big and new and untried.1: Clarity means you have a clear vision of the outcome you are hoping to bring into reality.2: When you have clarity, you always know what to do next.3: Commitment means that quitting will never occur to you.4: When you have commitment, you find a solution to every obstacle.5: Continual Improvement means that you touch your project every day without fail.6: Touching your project every day – and moving it forward a little – unleashes the power of Exponential Little Bits, the energy that spins your flywheel.7: A thousand tiny touches don’t add up, they multiply. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen, and 28 cycles later you have exceeded one billion.8: The only things you cannot know in advance are(A.) How long is it going to take?(B.) How much is it going to cost?9: If you insist on knowing those answers in advance, these are the answers:(A.) It will take as long as it takes(B.) It will cost what it costs.10: If you demand answers with more details, you either lack commitment or you believe I can see the future.11: I cannot see the future.12: The only hard part is step number one.You will notice I have given you a 12-step program. This is because doing things that are big, new, and untried is highly addictive, and every addictive thing has its own 12-step program.Do not confuse it with a plan.Roy H. WilliamsPS – George Bernard Shaw said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” Roy might tell you more about George Bernard Shaw next week. Or then again, maybe not. – IndyCharlie Munger was the billionaire businessman who built Berkshire Hathaway side-by-side with Warren Buffett. Just weeks before Munger died at age 99, Gregory Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal spent 4 hours with Charlie in the billionaire’s Los Angeles home and came away with some life-changing insights. This week, roving reporter Rotbart interviews the last journalist to interview Charlie Munger, which makes everyone who listens to this week’s episode of Monday Morning Radio just three degrees of separation from Charlie Munger and four degrees from Warren Buffett. How can you resist? This party will start the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com.

A germ is a tiny thing, but it can divide and become two germs, then four.Four becomes eight and after only 28 more cycles you find yourself handcuffed in the sad darkness of more than one billion germs.One billion, seventy-three million, seven hundred and forty-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four germs, to be exact.And they are all trying to kill you.Unlike the more beautiful forms of life, germs carry only one set of chromosomes instead of two. They reproduce by dividing into two cells, a process called binary fission.It began as a tiny cut. But every time you open that wound, you increase the pain of it.This is why it is dangerous to nurse a grudge. When we remember painful moments, we increase their strength.Did you know that most of what we remember never really happened? At least not the way we remember it.When we remember something that happened, we do not recall the event objectively. None of us do. We reconstruct the event according to how it made us feel the last time we thought about it. We remember only the memory of our memory.The memories you carry in your mind are distorted reconstructions, at best. But the assumptions you made – especially the motives and intentions you ascribed to other people – quickly crystallize into “indisputable facts” in your mind.That last statement bears repeating: the motives and intentions you ascribe to other people quickly crystallize into “indisputable facts” in your mind.Therein lies a great danger. When you nurse a grudge, you distort reality by crystallizing emotional impressions into “hard facts” that you believe with all your heart. And the more often you revisit that pain, the tighter your handcuffs and the deeper your darkness.We’ve heard it before, but it is good for us to hear it again:“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”Every person deserves to be remembered for their best moment.Take that thought with you into the new year. When you remember a person, search the secret corners of your mind for an event, a moment, something that person said, or did, that makes you smile a little. Replace your dark, sad memory with one that is happy and light.Don’t do it for them. Do it for you.Have a happy new year.Roy H. WilliamsSide Hustles, Online Retailing, Military Contracts, Bras, Walt Disney, Firefighters, Business Exit Strategies, and Worms. Those were 8 of the Top 10 Episodes for MondayMorningRadio in 2023. This week, roving reporter Rotbart – with brilliant co-host and son, Maxwell – revisit the highlights of 2023 and share an audio preview of their new book, a Monday Morning Radio anthology offering insights from 25 of the most interesting guests in the history of the show. The book won’t be released until March, but you can begin profiting from its compiled wisdom the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

“The thing about the systematic reduction of a woman down to her parts is that she doesn’t always know it’s happening while it’s going on. Just one day she wakes up and realizes that all she was,was a face,a line of cleavage,two legs,a couple of hands,the swivel of her pelvis,the swell of her breast.We were just the disembodied parts in the display cases. One day we wake up to find out that the diamonds were never chocolate at all; they were brown the whole time. And our bodies, which are finally ours again, can move on all we want, though they forever remain a library of our lives — of the hurt and the shame, and of what we either allowed or didn’t allow other people to get away with.”– Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times, April 23, 2019“The number of ‘likes’ a photo receives is correlated with sexualization on Instagram. This partially confirmed Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of self-objectification, where young women generally see themselves as objects for viewers to judge through ‘likes.'”– Amber L. Horan,“Picture This! Objectification Versus Empowerment in Women’s Photos on Social Media”“In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message we receive is that a woman’s value and power lies in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity, inner-self, or passions.”– Sonia SuarezLike most men, I’ve long been fascinated with women. But what, exactly, defines “woman”? Definitions are so conflicted that I believe anyone who attempts to define “woman” is certain to be criticized. But when has that ever been an impediment to a curious mind? Today’s examination of the mystery and magic of women begins with a handful of quotes that show us “the perfect woman” that can exist only in the mind of a man. Psychologist Carl Jung calls her the anima. I call her, “The Imaginary Woman.”“What do we know about the goddesses, those elusive female figures, stronger than human males, more dangerous than male deities, who represent not real women but the dreams of real men?”– Alice Bach, Women in the Hebrew Bible, p. 17“I think the idealization of women is indigenous to men. There are various ways of idealizing women, especially sexually, based in almost every case on their inaccessibility. When a woman functions as an unobtainable love object, she takes on a mythical quality.”– James Dickey, Self Interviews, p. 153Miguel de Cervantes gave us a perfect example of the imaginary woman 418 years ago. Don Quixote sees a village girl in the distance – Aldonza Lorenzo by name – and says,“Her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible.”In the book, Don Quixote never meets Dulcinea. He sees her only from a distance. Like Helen of Troy – the face that launched 1,000 ships – Dulcinea is the anima, that perfect woman who can exist only in the imagination of a man. Everything Quixote accomplishes and endures is in her name and for her honor.“The girls in body-form slacks wander the High Street with locked hands while small transistor radios sit on their shoulders and whine love songs in their ears. The younger boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of Tanger’s Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws. They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing.”– John Steinbeck“Freda was a dazzle, a virtual watercolor of a woman whose moods and mannerisms were as electric as her wild black hair. Her grin alone, a flash of Ipana-white teeth, head tossed back, stopped men in their tracks, delayed them in traffic, and threatened their wives so completely even the milkman was not allowed to deliver at Freda’s house.”“At the age of thirty-five Freda had had a mastectomy. The bow and arrow was her therapy, to strengthen what was left of her chest muscles. Her body had been perfect, a sculptor’s model, and she’d worn her summer shirts tied up high under her breasts, braless most of the time.She still wore her shirts knotted at the rib cage, but now they were men’s cotton pajama tops, the material thicker so you could not see through; but often when she bent forward I could see the scarred bony place where the breast had been. I never knew if she was bitter for the loss, if she stared at the deformity in the mirror and wished for a time when she’d been whole. She never said. I never asked. She was not a woman martyred by tragedy, nor was she at all acquainted with self-pity. She’d tried once to kill my stepfather, whom she’d always referred to by his first and last names, Bill McClain, the two words run together in her odd accent so it came out ‘Bimicain,’ sounding like a fungal cream.”– Lorian Hemingway, Walk on Water, p. 38-39“Half a dozen global studies, conducted by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Columbia University, have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability.”– Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Atlantic, April 14, 2014Dr. Nick Grant once told me,“Men worry about high and low. Women worry about near and far.”I asked him what he meant. He said,“When a man is speaking, he is thinking subconsciously, ‘What do you think of me now that I’ve said this? Am I higher or lower in your estimation?’ But when a woman speaks, she is thinking, ‘What do you think of me now that I’ve said this? Does it make us closer, or further apart?'”You may not agree with that, but like I said at the start, “Anyone who attempts to define ‘woman’ is certain to be criticized.”An International Peace Institute study of 182 signed peace agreements between 1989 and 2011 found that when women are included in peace processes, there is a 35 percent increase in the probability that a peace agreement will last 15 years or more.The Wise Men of the Christmas story in Matthew chapter two have been celebrated for two thousand years. But what if they had been Wise Women instead?“Three wise women would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts and there would be peace on earth.”Merry Christmas,Roy H. WilliamsRiyaz Adat was on death’s doorstep, withering away in excruciating pain in the transplant ward of Toronto General Hospital. This week on a special edition of Monday Morning Radio, roving reporter Rotbart narrates the uplifting true story of Riyaz’s miraculous survival and recovery — reading from the Christmas book Rotbart and his wife, Talya, wrote and published two years ago. Their book has since become a perennial holiday favorite. You can hear it right now at MondayMorningRadio.com. Merry Christmas!

I don’t know if he was was an American Patriot or a British Loyalist. All I know is that he owned a 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler,” a leather bound book on fly fishing.That book was 50 years old when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence.Speaking of Jefferson, that same fly-fisherman bought a first edition of the complete, 4-volume leather bound set of “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies” written by Thomas Jefferson and published in 1829. This leads me to believe that our fly-fishing friend purchased his 103-year-old copy of the 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler” at about that same time, roughly 200 years ago.There were no modern books in his collection.I just realized something. Our fly-fishing friend was obviously an American Patriot, or he would not have purchased Thomas Jefferson’s “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies” in 1829.“Hang on a moment, Roy, you identified that man as a ‘Fly-Fishing Fanatic’ in the title of today’s MondayMorningMemo. What led you to call him that?”I call him a “Fly-Fishing Fanatic” because the majority of the 18 books in his collection were about fly fishing, including a 1750 edition, a 1760 edition, and an 1823 edition of “The Compleat Angler” by Izaak Walton.I bought his entire collection because books are cool, especially books that are centuries old.What would have been REALLY cool, though, is if this lover-of-books who lived during the years of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington also owned an original, 1605 first-edition of Don Quixote de La Mancha. Wouldn’t that have been cool?There are only 10 known copies of that book in all the world, and the last one to change hands sold 35 years ago for 1,500,000 dollars. There are no universities that own a copy, and there are no copies available to public view except the one that is owned by the citizens of the United States of America, and that one is closely guarded in our Library of Congress.Did you guess already?Our colonial fly-fishing friend did, in fact, own a 1605 edition of Cervantes’ masterpiece, and I bought it with the rest of his collection.The mystery is that my copy is roughly 8 inches by 11 inches, much larger than the 4-inch by 6-inch edition owned by the Library of Congress. My copy is, without question, extraordinarily old. The attributes that bring me to this conclusion are not easily faked.The cover is wrapped in the remains of old, brittle vellum – tightly stretched animal skin – and the pages are substantial and thick. It is not, however, the unauthorized pirated version published in Portugal in 1605, because mine has the correct 1605 frontispiece and title page, identical to that of the 4-inch by 6-inch 1605 edition held by the Library of Congress.My copy has the vellum cover and ties, like the 1605 Portuguese edition and the 1620 English edition, but it is neither of those.It appears to a centuries old Presentation Edition, if such a thing existed so long ago.The print seems to occupy about the same dimensions as the smaller, first book, but the pages themselves are bigger and more substantial, as if the original press was used on larger paper, leaving a lot of unprinted paper bordering the original-sized text.Meredith Mann, a specialist at the New York Public Library, writes,“Don Quixote was first printed in Madrid in 1605. It was an immediate success—the first edition quickly sold out, and new ones were printed both in Spain and throughout Europe. I can’t neglect mentioning that the Rare Book Division holds one of these scarce early printings, in a contemporary and typically Spanish binding of limp vellum, labelled by hand on its spine.” She wasn’t describing my book when she wrote that in 2015, but she might as well have been.We have, for the moment at least, a rare and unidentifiable unicorn.I have no doubt that my friends in the Cervantes Society will be happy to help identify our unicorn, and the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library very generously offers to help answer questions for researchers.In any event, I am content. My Don Quixote is old and rare and wonderful; beautiful on the inside, but outwardly rough and tattered like Quixote, himself. This Quixote reminds me of the Quixote within its pages; he began in a library, but then went out and did the things he had read about. This book has lived what Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he said,“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!'”Until we know for sure exactly what it is, I will keep it in a safe deposit box at the bank. If it turns out to be as unique as it currently appears to be, Pennie and I plan to loan it to an American university that will keep it on display to the public. We have no stomach for hoarding treasure that might bring pleasure to others.I will, however, keep my Thomas Jeffersons and my fly-fishing books in the grand library on the catwalk above the Eye-of-the-Storm lecture hall in the tower at Wizard Academy.Anything can happen! Never forget that.The best things in your life are yet to come. I see them in your future, waiting patiently for you to arrive so they can jump out and surprise you and make you dance with joy.I smile, thinking about your happiness.Merry Christmas.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I discovered this Colonial collection of books only because my friend Dewey Jenkins flew into town and gave me a large sum of money with which to, “go and find some more of those crazy things you love that always have interesting stories behind them.” Dewey came to Austin principally to celebrate our achievement of a wild and crazy goal we agreed upon 11 years ago. If you can find a copy of “Mr. Jenkins told Me,” I promise you will enjoy it and that it will teach you things that will make you a lot of money.Chris McShanag has worked alongside two physician entrepreneurs to build a business that provides virtual assistants to doctors, dentists, and veterinarians. The service worked so well that Chris and his partners finally realized it would work for any company. Many business owners contemplate moving from one business niche to another, but very few actually do it. This week, Chris McShanag shares with roving reporter Rotbart the ups and downs, and lessons gleaned from doing what has rarely been done. The time is now. The place is MondayMorningRadio.com