Today's inauguration will he historic in many ways, including the range of emotions that will be felt … Excitement and apprehension. Pride and sorrow. And hopefully, hope for us all.
BANTER BITE BACKSTORY: We're not sure this has a backstory, unless you count over 230 years of history. Or, the conversations between Red and Black (yes, we know we need to do podcasts), who once again have very different ways of looking at things, including the presidential inauguration. Red has a bunch of mixed emotions – excitement, fear, pride, sadness – and focused on all the details of the day, including how different this inauguration's going to be in almost every way from previous inaugurations. Plus, how excited she is that her daughters will see the inauguration of our country's first female Vice President.
Black, on the other hand, is more pragmatic. She takes her usual long-term, big picture approach combined with a very different way of looking at things. After all, how else would you explain her comparing an inauguration to a wedding?!
Labor Day celebrates the American worker. However you may celebrate, we wish you a Happy Labor Day!
Quick! If someone says "Julius Caesar," what comes to mind?
Almost everyone has heard of Julius Caesar, but how many of us really know much about him, or at least that's what Red starts to wonder when she receives the usual flippant, but still accurate, reply from her sister, after feeling very proud that she knew that July was named after the famous Roman.
Which is what got Red to realize, much to her surprise (shock, if truth be told), that even as a straight-A student with a love of history, that when it came to Julius Caesar, a famous historical figure and possibly one of the greatest generals and statesmen of all time, she couldn't tell you dates or battles or anything "historical" associated with him.
Even as a theater major in college, she never read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," although she knew just enough about the play to know that it was where the fortune teller warned Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March." Instead, her knowledge of Caesar came from her love of movies.
My first, and probably my most enduring, memory is of a brilliant general who not only commanded armies as he conquered lands far from home but was a great statesman who was also involved with one of the world's most beautiful women. And while he was Julius Caesar and the woman was Cleopatra, to me, they'll always be Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, a movie almost as controversial as the general himself.
And Black? Besides knowing that Caesar Salad was invented by a different Caesar, she appreciates Julius Caesar's leadership skills and way with words,
There is much we can learn about leadership from Julius Caesar, whether on the battlefield, in politics, or in business (start small, take risks, communicate well), including what ultimately led to his death (always consider worst-case scenarios, never get complacent or arrogant). Many of his quotes speak (pun intended) to his powerful way with words, and the ability to not only deliver a message but to inspire (and story tell), with my favorite being, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
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