Wanna help? Put on your headphones, turn it up and tell me what you think about the sound quality.

This player includes some of my favorite songs from some of my favorite albums released in 2010.

Martin Buttrich – Crash Test
Matthew Dear – Black City
!!! – Strange Weather
The Clientele – Bonfires on the Heath
Magnolia Electric Co. – Josephine

What you may not know is that one of my long-time desires has been to continue doing work that I find meaningful well into my “later years,” while definitely doing so on a very part-time and flexible basis. I have been vaguely expecting to transition into this “semi-­retirement” mode sometime in the future (you know, when I get a older).

However, after the collapse of the Fiore-Irgens proposal for the Madison Central Library, I faced a sudden void in my work plan where I had expected to spend several years of effort on Block 66.

Given the lack of real estate projects on the horizon at Fiore over the next few years, this seems to be the right time for me to begin a process of transitioning from my executive position at Fiore to an independent consulting practice that will provide me with more long-term flexibility over my activity level and schedule.

So beginning July 1, 2010, I will be reducing my schedule at Fiore Companies to four days / week.

In 2012, this will be further reduced to three days / week beginning January 1, 2012.

During this time I will begin providing CFO services and business coaching for a limited number of small clients. (More to come)

I’m very happy about the run I’ve enjoyed at Fiore, particularly because of the great people I’ve worked with and the things we’ve done together. But I’m also very excited to begin moving into a new phase of my life and career.

But did you also know that after graduating from Northern Illinois University (summa cum laude), I undertook post-graduate study there in accountancy? … I confess that I never finished this. My primary motivation was to buy time so that I could directly assist in the home birth of my first child. I worked in the hospitality industry as a night auditor for University Guest Rooms, and studied obstetrics in addition to my accounting theory texts.

At that time, I was also deeply involved in the local community food cooperative – Duck Soup Coup. So naturally, I gravitated to studying “human value” and “ecological value” in my accounting theory work. That’s when I first recognized how significantly flawed are current financial reporting systems. Only reporting value for “financial capital” and ignoring these other economic values? That’s ridiculous! We all know that human resources are an investment. We all know that pollution creates a cost upon our society. But financial statements don’t reflect this, and bad decisions are made as a consequence!

By the time I got involved in real estate, I had also connected these values to the importance of “quality of place” in our quality of life… Quality of place affects people at their soul. In my mind, “quality places” are inviting, welcoming and comfortable, soothing or enriching, and appropriate to their surroundings. Like human value, quality of place has value too – even if it is not recognized in the equation.

One of my joys in working for The Fiore Companies over the years has been the opportunity to participate in developing a number of really nice additions to the community. These developments have all been authentic in material and design, functionally practical, and appropriate to their place. Fiore earns a modest return and the projects work. I’m proud of this.

Most recently I’ve been thinking a lot about “home” and “roots.” I just returned from “a trip of a lifetime” where I saw my daughter marry a great guy in Ireland, toured the country, and felt a deep connection with my family history… We stayed three nights in Ennis – a 750 year old city that has held a weekly farmers market every Saturday since obtaining permission from the King of England in 1609! While there, I mentioned to a wonderful Irishman – Paul Corey (who photographed my daughters wedding) – that I thought it must feel amazing to be surrounded by so much history. And he said, “Sure, but we are all just humans right?” That made me really think about how “my people” are from Chicago (by way of New Orleans, Canada and Roscommon), but my place is now here in Madison Wisconsin – my home for the past 30 years – and the birthplace of both my children with Aszani.

I live on a street named after an insightful urban planner (Phil Lewis) who long ago foresaw a future where Madison and Chicago are part of a continuous megalopolis. He thought we should recognize this and plan accordingly – protect our environmental resources by building vertically. Chicago – Milwaukee – Madison already form a single regional triangle, don’t you think? … I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago – Chicagoland. But from a broad perspective, Madison is also part of Chicagoland – it’s one region.

Likewise, Madison’s metropolitan service area (MSA) includes all of Dane, Columbia and Iowa Counties. That’s Madisonland! The political boundaries between Madison and surrounding communities are simply historical anachronisms. We’ve got to recognize this because, in the end, we will rise and fall together. So I am hopeful that in the future we will work together for the common good within “Greater Madison”!

This is a very good place… it’s worth nurturing!

We made good fun of the fact that it came with a numbered and signed “Certificate of Authenticity.”

I saved it of course, because on its back is a key with the meaning of a selection of Aran stitches. I only recently looked closely at the certificate… This little detail made me laugh:

Nonetheless, it is still my “new favorite sweater.” Beautiful stitching, cotton lining and fleece collar – the wool sweater perfected.

Sent: Friday, April 14, 2000 10:33 AM
Subject: Thoughts and Ideas

Greetings.

In recent weeks, I have reviewed with you the elements of Fiore’s vision statement, and discussed some of the development and investment activities of the company. In the next few memos, I plan to focus on each of the functional divisions in the company. But first I thought I would share with you some food for thought from an address given last fall as part of the executive-in-residence program at the University of Notre Dame by Elmer W. Johnson, who is a former Exec VP and Director of GM. The purpose of his talk was to take moral stock of our economic system. After making a powerful case for capitalism, he went on to discuss several contemporary moral concerns, one of which was the question of “character and the market mentality”:

“In The Battle for Human Nature (1986), Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, argues that the disciplines of economics, evolutionary biology, and behavioral theory have converged on a frightening conception of human beings as self-interested, rational, economic individuals living in a world of social Darwinism very much to their liking, a conception that has come to be so widely accepted that it threatens to undermine the traditional conception of humans as moral beings who are obligated to choose the right, regardless of self-interest. As the modern conception becomes ever more pervasive, Schwartz says, our social lives and democracy itself are tainted and transformed by the market mentality: everything becomes a commodity. Thus, a false conception of humans becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet as Schwartz says, the commercialization of noneconomic goods is ultimately self-destructive. Society cannot hold together, and even the market cannot exist, without conventions of social responsibility and mutual trust.”

So his question is: How do we prevent (both individually and as a society) the all-pervasive “culture of the market” from eroding our institutional and personal lives and frustrating our higher purposes?

I believe, that if we really “buy-in” to our corporate vision and live out these values, it mitigates the worst aspects of this market mentality. And just as some of the early defects of capitalism – such as cartels, investor fraud and exploitation of workers – were remediated by reforms over the past century, we can help to bring about a corrective to these continuing moral concerns by the way in which we carry out our business.

What do you think?

Regards,
Bill

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Fiore Companies
William J. Kunkler, Executive Vice President
wkunkler@fioreco.com

For a number of perfectly legitimate reasons, I was a reluctant dog owner… but Maureen and Dan wore me down and I agreed that we could get one a little over 11 years ago. Aszani did all the research and we found a wonderful breeder of Golden Retrievers. We paid for an upcoming “pick of the litter” – and we picked the friendliest puppy (of the friendliest breed). That’s how Abby entered our family, and everyone who met her would join me in affirming her lovely and friendly spirit.

My family and friends all know how much I came to love this dog… She was a great companion to me, and I guess its true – she has turned me into a “dog person.”

Here are some of the things I learned from her:

• Give every stranger you meet an open friendly greeting. Some people won’t connect with you, but many will and you will receive much affection and friendship in return.
• Walk away from trouble. Some creatures are just nasty, so just avoid them.
• Don’t be afraid to approach those that you’ve angered. Simply express your love, and wait to be forgiven.
• Pursue your pleasures – and your dreams. Even if you never can catch that rabbit.

Peace, sweet dog.

Being described as a “rabid” anything is not so flattering. Informing the community that I was a “rabid, right-wing activist” was simply amazing. . . My friends found this to be hilarious.

For the record – I have never met, wrote or talked to either Bill Lueders or Anatole Beck.

Click on the image to read a pdf file.

I admired Stuart Levitan’s response.

I start all my new music at a 4 rating. Songs that leap out at me, I will bump up to 5 stars. And iff I’ve played out a song, I will eventually down rate it; but never more than one step at a time. Just as frequently, I will find myself hearing an older song that just slays me and will kick up its rating.

Here is the “repeat frequency” allowed in my random mixes for each level:

• 5 stars –not more than once a week
• 4 stars –not more than once a month
• 3 stars –not more than once a year
• 2 stars –not more than every two years
• 1 star – not played in my mix

I find this to be very easy to implement and it can help you enjoy fresh playlists with a really nice mix of “hot tracks” – new and old – and a measure of older songs and obscurities to keep it interesting.

[If you've not reset this on your iTunes player, do it right now: Preferences / Advanced / Importing]

All along my friend Ankur was encouraging lossless formats, but I wanted to balance iPod battery life (it takes more juice to play the hi-fi files), storage (lossless requires 10X the storage space), and discernable sound quality (these old ears have been beaten and abused at live rock shows for decades).

Even so, it wasn’t long before I needed to buy an external hard drive to store my music files, and when I did I bumped up the bitrate to 190kbps because the marginal storage demand seemed reasonable and why not improve the audio quality (even if I couldn’t obviously discern it).

Years have gone by, storage is cheap and I now have a 500GB drive for music files only and an 80 GB video iPod. I’ve also built a really fine music system for listening to my digital collection (currently 24,000 tracks). So in the last few months I have embraced Ankur’s advice – and I am ripping my new music in lossless format using AIFF encoder. My belief is that music affects us on a number of levels – physical, spiritual, emotional – and the full spectrum of recorded sound should not be compressed without necessity.

My advice: always buy the music you enjoy in the greatest audio spectrum possible: CD, LP or lossless digital. If you must buy “lossy digital” – seek out the highest bitrate available.

The Mini was a great first iPod for me, because it forced me into using Smart Playlists to sync a “fresh” portion of my collection onto the device. I really like this element of the iTunes interface, and the random play features occasionally pull some obscure track from my old recordings that I’d forgotten about completely – but really enjoy a lot upon rediscovery. It helps keep my collection in front of me – rather than just the most recent stuff I’ve been into.

Nonetheless, I’ve got a very diverse collection of music and some of it does not really want to be played together randomly! So I began using groupings to provide some additional intelligence to the “smart playlists” that I was constructing. I hope that you utilize this feature of iTunes, which allows you to “program” virtual DJs to put together playlists that refresh themselves. In a sense it provides a crude artificial intelligence of sorts – and by providing a a little “feedback” you can tweak how the iTunes compiles the playlist.

I will say that I am not a fan of the stock iPod earbuds, and replaced them promptly with Shure E3 earbuds (with Shure foam sleeves), which made a huge improvement in sound quality. If you listen regularly to your iPod on headphones, good quality earbuds is one of the best investments one can make.

Well, after I wore out the battery on the iPod Mini, I bought an 80 GB video iPod – which allows me to carry a good portion (but not all) of my music collection with me.

Most recently, I replaced my Dell desktop with a Mac Pro – which is an exceptional computer for use as a music server. And I added a Sonos system to tie the music server into my house stereo as well as my new office listening system.

I’m one of those people who worry that too many young adults today have not been exposed to hi-fi sound, and don’t know what they are missing. Digital music can sound like crap – but it also can sound fantastic. It’s primarily a function of source bitrate, amplifier quality and speaker quality. You’ve got to hear the difference!