Les Stewart’s franchisee prayer.

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Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies– but not before they have been hanged.

Heinrich Heine 1797 – 1856

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If you are going to follow Jesus, you had better look good on wood.

Daniel Berrigan SJ 1921 – 2016

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You’ve had the experience but have you sought the education to process your franchise crisis?

Franchise fiascos can be the gateway to your and your descendants protection and prosperity.

I suggest to people and groups an alternate franchise understanding.

Most people are content to drift on the light breezes of franchise industry lies.

People are more interested in blaming others rather than breaking the shell of their own ignorance.

In that way, franchising re-distributes resources to those most aware.

Fifty per cent (50%) of franchisees who lost their life savings to common industry practices are ready to spin the wheel a second time.

Predatory franchising and the franchise bar rely on you misunderstandding the core reason for your economic loss.

It’s not the brand that will save you a 2nd time.

Learn the real reasons behind franchise fraud.

Franchising is usually an overwhelmingly distractive force.

The complexities grow when a lawyer is brought in to help.

Pattern recognition is best done by those who are not monopoly (1) law and (2) franchise bar practioners.

Throw away the powdered wig and those who cling to its antiquated value.

Some wisdom that’ll likely be lost on most self-satisfied franchisees.

Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations.

Andrew Carnegie 1835 – 1919

“Anything, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, LSD, I’m for anything that works,”: Cohen on the means of spiritual seeking.

The new record opens with the title track, “You Want It Darker,” and in the chorus, the singer declares:

Hineni Hineni
I’m ready my Lord.

Leonard Cohen at home in Los Angeles in September, 2016. Photograph by Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker

Hineni is Hebrew for “Here I am,” Abraham’s answer to the summons of God to sacrifice his son Isaac; the song is clearly an announcement of readiness, a man at the end preparing for his service and devotion. Cohen asked Gideon Zelermyer, the cantor at Shaar Hashomayim, the synagogue of his youth in Montreal, to sing the backing vocals. And yet the man sitting in his medical chair was anything but haunted or defeated.

“I know there’s a spiritual aspect to everybody’s life, whether they want to cop to it or not,” Cohen said. “It’s there, you can feel it in people—there’s some recognition that there is a reality that they cannot penetrate but which influences their mood and activity. So that’s operating. That activity at certain points of your day or night insists on a certain kind of response. Sometimes it’s just like: ‘You are losing too much weight, Leonard. You’re dying, but you don’t have to coöperate enthusiastically with the process.’ Force yourself to have a sandwich.

“What I mean to say is that you hear the Bat Kol.” The divine voice. “You hear this other deep reality singing to you all the time, and much of the time you can’t decipher it. Even when I was healthy, I was sensitive to the process. At this stage of the game, I hear it saying, ‘Leonard, just get on with the things you have to do.’ It’s very compassionate at this stage. More than at any time of my life, I no longer have that voice that says, ‘You’re fucking up.’ That’s a tremendous blessing, really.”

— Leonard Cohen makes it darker, The New Yorker magazine, October 17, 2016