Aug
28
Return to Auburn University

Last week, my sister Anita and I traveled to our shared Alma Mater, Auburn University, on our way home from Pensacola. Neither of us had visited the campus in almost a decade.

A couple of years ago, I started an online gallery selling my images of Scenic locations. It included lots of photos from Tuscaloosa, but none from the Loveliest Village on the Plains. With these new images, I have remedied that.

Anita and I drove around to take note of the changes. Lots of parking decks that would’ve been nice when she and I walked a mile to Haley Center. We also noticed how the students have tiny backpacks, presumably filled with tablets instead of the 40-pounds of textbooks that we used to lug around.

Auburn’s season opener in college football is this coming weekend, a rematch of the 2010 National Championship Game that we won. Wish I could travel to watch it, but not in the cards right now. I’ll be watching on TV and yelling, “War Eagle”!

 

Aug
18
Travel Alert: Pensacola (Aug 18-21)

I will be in Pensacola Beach through Wednesday, August 21 scouting new faces for photoshoots and shooting content for my new Patreon. Contact Me if you are interested or want to refer someone.

Aug
14
Sorry, But I Told You So

It’s official. I can finally say “I told you so,” on a couple of critical points that I got into arguments with people about a few years ago.

Two recent studies illustrate the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the invasion of Iraq – both of which were heralded by the GOP as highlights of its leadership but turned out quite disastrously.

Bottom Line: the tax cuts didn’t come remotely close to “paying for themselves by turbocharging the economy” as President Trump repeatedly promised. They did substantially lower effective corporate tax rates and generate a flood of stock buybacks and dividends for shareholders.

Jane Gravelle and Donald Marples, who studied the tax cuts, are a lot like those who looked so hard to find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. They searched but found almost nothing.

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Aug
12
Testimonial from a Client: Oldham Properties

I received the nicest endorsement last week from a former client, Mark Oldham of Oldham Properties. He’s a former client because I no longer employed full-time with the marketing agency through which I performed work for him.

It follows:

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is being written on behalf of Steven Stiefel.

Steven handled my various accounts while he was employed with Riverworks Marketing in Chattanooga. We owned 2 inns and 2 restaurants during his tenure there — StoneFort Inn, TerraMae, as well as Dancing Bear Lodge and Appalachian Bistro in Townsend, Tennessee.

Amongst other things, Steve wrote a ton of copy, “word-smithed” many ads, responded to complaints in the most incredibly professional manner (which we still miss to this date), brainstormed ideas, and generally was a fantastic person with whom to deal on all aspects of our marketing.

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Aug
08
Glamour Photography: A Casualty of Changing Times, Yet Timeless

When my older brother Mark was a pimple-faced, overweight teenage boy with zero prospects of dating a real flesh and blood woman, he pinned iconic posters of sexy female celebrities like Farrah Fawcett and Loni Anderson all over his bedroom walls. These voluptuous babes — their firm breasts threatening to burst out of their bikini tops at any moment — were accompanied by classic beauties like Jane Seymour.

The display essentially surrounded him on all sides by the women who eluded him in real life outside of that room and provided him with an outlet for the adolescent angst he felt by the societal constraints on doing what comes naturally to teenage boys.

via GIPHY

I would visit his room to listen to albums he owned and talk about science fiction TV shows we liked – all an excuse for me to marvel at the exceedingly beautiful faces and bodies on display like a Sistine Chapel of the Erotic.
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Aug
06
How to Beat Donald Trump (and Save Your Sanity)

The political left and right in America today have sharp differences of opinions, but we share a couple of things. First, we love the country and want to improve upon it. Secondly, we are operating out of fear and anxiousness that the opposite will happen unless we say something.

We argue on social media about current policy debates, such as whether to launch a national effort to deport all unauthorized immigrants and whether to place new restrictions on gun ownership and abortion. I’m trying to remove myself from those often unpleasant back-and-forth conversations where we are pretty much talking AT each other instead of TO each other.

I think I can be most productive producing content the rest of you can use to win hearts and minds instead of arguing with someone on Facebook who doesn’t care what I think.

Another thing we seem to agree on is that social media amplifies these voices as people on competing sides of the political spectrum seek to win the hearts and minds of the moderates in the center, those folks who have not yet made up their minds, do not follow the news closely and simply want to make a living with a minimal amount of fuss.

The debate of the moment within the Democratic Party concerns which strategy is best for denying Donald Trump a second term. Should the Dems choose a “safe,” moderate candidate to win back voters who rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016? Or did they lose that last election because Clinton was too much of an establishment candidate who lacked the charisma to close the deal?

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Aug
04
Stories Behind the Images: Alois Schweda

I’m starting a new blog series called “Stories Behind the Images.” I’ll share select images from the archives and reveal details from its creation.

This is Alois Schweda, a man I met in the early 1990s when this portrait was made to accompany a feature story I did about him for the Times-Journal newspaper.

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Aug
04
The 40 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Business

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
– Tony Robbins

Having the information you need to determine whether a new business idea is practical begins with asking the right questions.

Starting a new business often begins with a desire to create something unique that we can control instead of spending the rest of our careers reliant upon someone else making decisions that affect our livelihoods.

The spark, the entrepreneurial fire, begins with an idea and a desire to create something. Maybe it is buying a popular franchise and bringing it to your community before someone else does. Or perhaps it is starting something from scratch and shaping it into whatever you want.
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Copyright Steven Stiefel 2018. All Rights Reserved