By Rebecca Ryskind Teti
Do you know about "Coffee Talk"?
It was one of the most popular features of the old Faith & Family Live blog, and when that site suffered demise, it found a new home here at Catholic Digest.
The premise is simple: everyone needs a group of diverse but like-minded friends with which it's safe to share good news, ask for prayers, inquire advice from more experienced folk, seek a reality check, commiserate -- or even get insanely excited over some money-or-time-saving tip.
We do all of that at Coffee Talk, an online community where readers help readers.
Each day of the week is dedicated to a different topic. You can participate daily or focus on the issues most relevant to you.
Wednesday: Natural Family PlanningFriday: Education (of any type -- public, parochial, charter, home -- it's all good where discussion is concerned)Weekends: Changing Roles -- a space to discuss the needs of the "sandwich generation" -- people who are managing the needs of kids in college, aging parents, and the beginnings of "change of life" are all fair game.Within those broad categories, anything goes. Raise a question, tell a funny anecdote, share an interesting article, ask for advice or prayer.
There are some ground rules, though: Keep it clean, keep it kind, and keep it "kosher."
Which is to say foul language won't be tolerated, and neither will personal attacks on other commenters --and since this is a Catholic apostolate, neither will outright attacks on Catholic teaching (although respectful questioning or seeking after deeper understanding is fair game. It's scorn and mockery that'll get your remark deleted, not a polite inquiry.)
We all know that comment boxes often don't reflect human nature at its best. Let's keep it uplifting here -- a model of what Christian conversation can be, and a place where if a non-Catholic or a struggling Catholic were to stumble upon us, he or she wouldn't be turned off by the way we speak to one another.
That means different perspectives and even disagreements are fine. There's not one right Catholic way of doing everything and we have so much to learn from each other.
At the same time, since written comments can easily be misunderstood, before you post a comment, imagine yourself saying it to a friend, in that friend's living room, over coffee. That's the spirit of Coffee Talk.
Over the years many readers have found the on-line community at Coffee Talk to be a godsend when they were feeling isolated or needed practical advice from experienced women in dealing with things like coping with Aspberger's Syndrome, dietary restrictions, NFP or marriage challenges and more.
Of course on-line talk can't substitute for actual medical or mental health intervention where it's called for -- but if what you need is someone to chat with over virtual coffee, won't you join us?
*************
Finding Coffee Talk: Until some planned site changes take place, Coffee Talk can be a little tricky to find. Go to our home page, scroll down past the features and "Quiet Moment" and you'll see "recent blog posts" under the Recipe of the Month.
There we are, a little hidden but there faithfully. Or you can find the link to each day's discussion posted on our Facebook/Twitter pages each morning.
Rebecca Ryskind TetiRebecca Ryskind Teti is a wife and mom writing from Hyattsville, MD. She is web editor of CatholicDigest.com. Follow her "In Good Company" column at Catholic News Agency
Sr. Luvia Joseph with St. Alphonse de Liguori studentsBy Sandy Wolniakowski
Sandy Wolniakowski, Haiti Outreach coordinator for St. Joseph Parish in Pewamo, Michigan, shares the important work of Sister Luvia Joseph, founder of St. Alphonse de Liguori School in Haiti.
WHO IS SISTER LUVIA JOSEPH?
Sister Luvia Joseph is a Roman Catholic nun who runs numerous programs in Haiti in an effort to help the people of the country she calls home.
WORK
Sister Luvia Joseph founded an orphanage in 1976, followed by St. Alphonse de Liguori Catholic School in 1984. She never turned away a student, and she would feed the children daily. Many children came to school only to receive food they could not get elsewhere, and some came for the safety that the walls of St. Alphonse offered from the poverty and dangers of Port au Prince.
A devastating earthquake in 2010 killed several religious sisters along with 150 children when the school building collapsed.
NEWS FROM HAITI
One day after that earthquake, I received a phone call from Sister Luvia. She was crying and trying to tell me about the earthquake and the lives lost. I tried to listen, but the language barrier, which already caused difficulty in communication, was further complicated by her hysteria. She told me her sister was dead. She tried to put into words something that no words can describe.
I listened and prayed. I told her we knew—that it was all over the news and help was on the way. My words seemed hollow and powerless, but she calmed down and listened. I assured her that the whole world was praying for Haiti. And then we were disconnected.
Later, Sister Luvia told me that she believed it was a miracle that she was able to make that call. The ability to communicate, which was difficult and sporadic before the earthquake, ceased completely after the quake. Any other time that she had tried to place a call had been unsuccessful. She was sure that God had blessed her with the ability to communicate with the outside world and to receive the little assurance that I could offer.
HEARING GOD’S VOICE
In the moments before the earthquake struck, Sister Luvia was attending a meeting of religious. Suddenly Sister Luvia heard a voice in her spirit telling her to get out of the building. Sister Luvia informed one of the other religious that he needed to get outside of the building, but he did not see the need to follow her direction. She excused herself from the conversation, and as she was making her way out and had reached the veranda, one of the leaders of the meeting asked to speak to her. She informed him that, if he wanted to speak to her, he would have to join her outside, and so he did.
Sister Luvia said that she felt drawn to an open lot. As she and her companion stepped foot onto that grassy patch, it was as if the earth gave way. She remembers grabbing onto a small tree to keep herself from being knocked down by the force of the quake.
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE
Sister Luvia was forced to live in the streets, along with the orphans and hundreds of thousands of others who had survived the earthquake and were now homeless. When it was possible to do so, Sister Luvia took the orphans—about 40 of them—to Miragoane. This was the location of another school operated by Sister Luvia, and while it did not escape the wrath of the earthquake, it was a much safer place for the children to be.
BLESSINGS AMIDST THE TRAGEDY
One of the orphan girls had been trapped beneath fallen concrete during the quake, but she was still alive. The rescuers could hear her calling for help, but it seemed that no matter how hard they worked they could not free her. Sister Luvia prayed that God might take the child’s life and end her suffering, and then the voice inside her spoke again. God told her to go back and get the child out.
Confused but obedient, Sister Luvia returned to the site and summoned others to help her. Using a crowbar and a piece of a broken door, they attempted once again to do the very thing that had been tried so many times before—only this time, God and his angels had joined their efforts, and within moments the child was free. Although she had sustained broken bones, she was alive, delivered from the darkness that had tried to claim her. In June of 2011, members of our group were blessed to see her and listen as she tearfully shared her story.
NEW PROJECTS
Sister Luvia personally designs the buildings she needs and oversees their construction herself. Prior to the earthquake, Sister Luvia had purchased property and begun the construction of a building she hoped would house St. Alphonse School, as well as several other programs she was operating in Port au Prince. She had interviewed several contractors until she met one who would agree to her construction plans. She made several trips to the site, insisting that rebar be placed in the concrete as reinforcement. This wisdom and persistence paid off, as the construction site survived the earthquake with no notable damage. When time allowed, construction continued; and today it is the new site of St. Alphonse School, replacing the previous site that was demolished by the quake.
MISSION
Sister Luvia Joseph says, “My mission is threefold: I hope to feed souls, bodies, and minds. It may be necessary to feed people’s bodies before they’ll accept food for their souls or an education. I hope to help my people to be better equipped to gain food for their souls and bodies, and I pray that, once nourished, they will help many others in Haiti.”
I remember asking Sister Luvia how she knew that she should pay attention to the voice that gave her such valuable direction on those two occasions. “I have learned to listen to that voice,” was her simple reply.
Sister Luvia continues her work today, helping the Haitians as they attempt to rebuild and move forward.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
While most of us will never accomplish the great tasks that Sister Luvia feels called to do, I am certain that “voice” speaks to us, too. Have we learned to listen? God only knows what great blessings might be in store for us if and when we do!
****************************
For more information on how to help Sister Luvia and the people of Haiti, contact:Sandy WolniakowskiHaiti Outreach Coordinatorstalphonsefoundationofhaiti@gmail.com
989-593-2479
By Rebecca Ryskind Teti
Lent is upon us, believe it or not, and as we think through the prayer and fasting regimens we ought to take on to prepare for Easter, let's not forget about almsgiving -- the neglected sister of the trio of practices the Church recommends for spiritual healing and growth.
Many of us here at Catholic Digest are participating this year in CRS Rice Bowl, the new-and-improved Catholic Relief Services faith formation program that helps participants live Lent in solidarity with the poor.
The concept is simple:
"A cardboard or homemade CRS Rice Bowl is used to collect your Lenten alms. These donations will put “rice” into the empty bowls of our hungriest brothers and sisters. It serves as a concrete reminder of the world’s poor and Jesus’ call to serve them."
The program isn't just for the needy, but about your spiritual growth too:
"A CRS Rice Bowl is also for you – it is inspiration for your Lenten journey. Daily reflections, weekly prayers, and stories of hope from around the world will enrich your relationship with God during this liturgical season and challenge you to live in solidarity with our most vulnerable brothers and sisters."
Be on the look out for rice bowls at your parish. Or if your parish doesn't already participate, you can do so individually by making your own rice bowl or ordering a free one. Or perhaps you can be the person who brings the program to your community?
We encourage you to join us in the journey through Lent with this worthy program uniting fasting, prayer and almsgiving!
Rebecca Ryskind TetiRebecca Ryskind Teti is a wife and mom writing from Hyattsville, MD. She is web editor of CatholicDigest.com. Follow her "In Good Company" column at Catholic News AgencyBy Marion Fernández-Cueto
We’ve all seen them: those lone, scruffy figures at intersections and freeway underpasses holding bent cardboard signs asking for a handout. Their faces are as cracked and blistered as the sidewalk. Their meager possessions lie tangled in a bucket, sack, or grocery cart behind them.
In the city where I live, it’s hard to drive more than a minute or two without passing one of these hopeless, hapless individuals. I used to dread the encounters, wincing inwardly as the traffic light inevitably turned yellow and forced me to a stop right in front of one of those PLEASE HELP signs.
For one thing, I didn’t know how to help. My loose change wasn’t going to reverse the course of this stranger’s life, I’d reason; it might even enable it. At the same time, even dollar bills seemed like a paltry response to the misery before me—passing money from my comfortable, insular, air-conditioned world into those scarred, eagerly trembling hands only emphasized the abyss of privilege between us.
Not giving was even worse. On the rare occasion I was carrying cash, refusing to share some made me secretly feel like a jerk. When I truly had nothing, however, I found myself wishing for a mere nickel to assuage my shame. Either way, I‘d avoid eye contact, eventually pretending that the pleading human being on the other side of the window simply didn’t exist. It was easier that way, and when the light turned green after an agonizing interval, I’d accelerate with relief.
One day, I understood something that changed my outlook—and my tortured commute—forever.
One of the main reasons I had become so ambivalent about giving to beggars, I realized, was a misplaced sense of responsibility. When asked for help in these haphazard, drive-by situations, I often felt overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable problems of the other person’s life and the pathetic limitations of my own response. That was a problem, I realized, because it wasn’t this stranger’s life I was being called to change at these moments. It was mine.
It was my heart and habits that were being tested here; my prejudices, my fears, and my unwillingness to see Christ in his most distressing disguise that was being challenged. Standing before me was another child of God, and what mattered was not first of all the efficacy, appropriateness, or size of my response, but the love that characterized it. “Love,” as St. John of the Cross wrote, “is the measure by which we will be judged.”
This simple epiphany freed me. I stopped fearing my daily roadway encounters, and I began to offer what I could—a bit of money, some snacks, fast-food coupons, or directions to a nearby shelter or food pantry. Sometimes all I had was a prayer and an apologetic gesture. But as I opened my hands, I was astonished to find my heart opening as well. Each lone, scruffy figure became not a problem to be fixed but a person to encounter and acknowledge in all of his broken humanity.
Love indeed is the measure. As followers of Christ, we can disagree, I think, about the best way to help the poor around us, but we cannot use fear, indifference, greed, or cynicism to circumvent the Gospel’s clear and simple commandment: “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away” (Mt 5:42).
Christ knows our responses will often be woefully inadequate—he said himself that the poor would always be with us. But he also said we will only receive in the measure with which we give—that we love him only to the extent to which we love our neighbor.
“We must be saved together,” wrote the French Catholic essayist Charles Péguy. “Together we must arrive before the Good Lord. What would he say to us if we arrived alone, if we came home to him without the others?”
I thought of that quote some weeks ago, when we pulled to a stop next to a begging Vietnam vet on our way to Sunday Mass. Handing some change out the window, I was stunned when he gently pushed it back into my hands. “No way,” he said, gesturing toward the car seats behind me. “You’ve got little ones back there. You take care of them now.”
And while the traffic light lingered on red, this weary old man and my delighted toddlers laughed and waved and blew kisses to each other. Their mutual glee, the light in their eyes, glows within me still.
Marion Fernandez-Cueto is an award-winning journalist who lives in Houston with her husband Andres and their three children.By Simcha Fisher
January marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the annual March for Life, so it's a natural time to promote respect for life from conception to natural end. But what does it mean to “respect life”? What does it mean to be “pro-life”? Of course it means being against abortion, assisted suicide, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning, and any other practice that is an affront to the dignity of the human person. But being pro-life isn’t mainly about being against things. Being pro-life means being for something. It means loving God’s gift of life, and acting on that love. Here are 34 pro-life activities you and your family can do! *
1. Give life. Consider adoption or foster care — or contribute to a fund to help foster or adoptive parents. Reece’s Rainbow (ReecesRainbow.org) helps parents pay for adoptions of kids with special needs.
2. Spiritually adopt a baby in danger of abortion. For nine months, say this prayer written by Fulton Sheen: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby that I have spiritually adopted, who is in danger of abortion.
3. Give routinely. When you shop for your family, get in the habit of picking up one extra item — a box of spaghetti, a bag of diapers, a few onesies or socks — and donate it to a local food pantry, crisis pregnancy center,or shelter.
4. Participate in 40 Days for Life. Check out 40DaysForLife.com to join in this hugely successful pro-life effort. Missed day one? No problem! Better late than never.
5. Join a group. Call your parish’s pro-life committee and ask where they need the most help. If there is no such group, ask your pastor if you can start one.
6. Spread the word. With your pastor’s permission, leave pro-life pamphlets or CDs in the church vestibule, or add posters or displays of fetal development where anyone can see them.
7. Love all human life. Make a special effort to be warm and genial to people who make you feel uncomfortable: the physically or mentally disabled, the old, the somewhat weird, the slightly smelly, the obviously lonely. Five minutes of friendly conversation might be a rare luxury for them.
8. Educate yourselves and others. Kids can educate their teachers and classmates. Need to write a history paper? Highlight the pro-life views of historical figures like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
9. Be an encourager. Give an encouraging smile to the young parents struggling with a howling kid at the back of the church. Whisper, “Hang in there, it gets easier!”
10. Stand up and speak out. Make plans to attend this year’s March for Life in Washington, DC, (MarchForLife.org) or participate in some other public demonstration of your faith. Kids love to make signs, and all Catholics should have the experience of being Catholic in public at some point in their lives.
11. Pray more. One Friday a month, quietly say a Rosary outside your local Planned Parenthood or abortion clinic.
12. Keep it kind. If you picket or protest, remember that you are showing the face of Christ to the world. Never be confrontational, rude, loud, or condemning. Remember, the woman heading into a clinic often feels like she has no choice. She is a victim, too.
13. Share your baby. If you are lucky enough to have one, share your beautiful baby! The world is not so hard that people don’t love to see babies. If you can, take a moment from your busy day to pause and let people admire your littlest one.
14. Use beautiful images. Whenever you can, use beautiful photos of living unborn babies, rather than gruesome photos of aborted babies.
15. Lend a hand to moms. Make a meal or two for a new mom. Have the kids make a “Welcome Baby” card too.
16. Be good to your own family. When Blessed Mother Teresa received her Nobel Peace Prize, someone asked her what we could do to promote world peace. She answered, “Go home and love your family.” The same is true for the pro-life cause: Pro-life work begins at home.
17. Be good to your family in public! You don’t have to be a happy, smiley, shiny family all the time, but don’t give the impression that your children are terrible burdens you wish you could shed. Especially if you have a large or boisterous family, remind the world that children are a joy.
18. Visit a nursing home. Some residents never get any visitors, and they would be delighted to hear your kids recite a poem, read a book aloud, sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” or just sit and chat for a little while.
19. Be positive. Don’t always be wringing your hands, howling in outrage, or mourning the evil in the world. Highlight the positive: adult stem-cell therapy that actually cures people, breakthroughs in prenatal corrective surgery, and stories of generosity and heroism.
20. Love all people. No matter what your politics, speak of other people in terms that show you recognize their dignity as children of God. It’s easy to be respectful of people with whom we agree; being truly pro-life means upholding the dignity of all life, including people you don’t really like.
21. Don’t forget about men. Remember that men suffer from abortion, too, and have no legal say in the decision to abort. Pray to St. Joseph for the men in your life; understand that men also grieve and suffer through life and death matters and need support.
22. Make a statement. A positive pro-life bumper sticker or t-shirt might be just the message someone needs to see one day.
23. Reach out to your leaders. Write letters to your state representatives. Keep them brief and very clear; ask specific questions and request answers.
24. Do your homework. Make sure teens and adults are fully informed about why the Church opposes euthanasia, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, etc. You never know when you might be called upon to defend your point of view, so make sure you really understand it.
25. Give your time to the dying. Volunteer at a hospice or become an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion to bring the blessed sacrament to shut-ins and the dying.
26. Pray to the saints. The patrons of the pro-life movement are a good place to start: St. Gianna Molla, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Faustina, St. Joseph, and St. Elizabeth.
27. Pray for the conversion of abortion workers. And find ways to support people who want to leave the industry. Check out Abby Johnson’s ministry, And Then There Were None (ATTWN.org).
28. Be better. Proponents of abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell research do their best to dehumanize their helpless victims in order to make it more palatable to harm them. Do better. Never dehumanize the people you oppose, with words or in your heart. Pray for them instead.
29. Stay informed. Keep up-to-date on pro-life news with Jill Stanek (JillStanek.com), Lila Rose (LiveAction.org), Feminists for Life (FeministsForLife.org), LifeSiteNews (LifeSiteNews.com), and National Right to Life (NRTLC.org).
30. Vote responsibly. If there are off-cycle or local elections where you live, take your kids with you to vote, and let them know that being pro-life affects your choice.
31. Support pro-life doctors. They probably have made a financial sacrifice by choosing not to prescribe contraception or perform or refer for abortion, sterilization, or euthanasia, so give them your business! Try this resource to find a provider in your area: OneMoreSoul.com/nfp-providers.
32. Follow Church teaching. Reject the use of artificial contraception utterly and fearlessly, as the Church calls us to. Being open to life is at the heart of respecting life.
33. Be gentle and loving. When you speak about women who’ve had abortions, remember that many people have pasts they regret — and they may be listening. Cruel and harsh words can do terrible harm. See Rachel’s Vineyard (RachelsVineyard.org) if someone you know needs support after an abortion.
Overwhelmed by all of this activity? Don’t be. Nobody does all of these things. Gather your family together and choose just a few things that you can do together. And remember one final activity …
34. Hope. It’s very easy to become discouraged when you think of the battle to come. But no matter what laws are passed, or what the latest polls show, place your trust in God. We are not fighting this war alone.
Now, get out there and make the most of the March for Life and the opportunity to spread respect for life!
*This article originally ran in Catholic Digest magazine as ways to observe October's Respect Life month. It has been slightly modified to fit January and the March for Life.
Simcha FisherSimcha Fisher is a writer and speaker who lives with her husband and nine children in New Hampshire. She blogs at SimchaFisher.com and at the National Catholic Register: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/By Robyn Lee
Department for Persons with Disabilities (DPD) provides residential, vocational, spiritual, and social services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Catholic Digest spoke with executive director Scott Milliken and development director Chris Brancato about their important work at DPD, which is the only Catholic Charities agency in the state of New Jersey.
WHO WE ARE: Department for Persons with Disabilities (DPD) is a Catholic Charities organization in the diocese of Patterson, New Jersey. We provide a very high level of care for adults with developmental disabilities and their families. We operate nine group homes, two supervised apartments, and one vocational day program. To live with us, a person has to be over the age of 21 and have a developmental disability.
OUR WORK: We have a program called “Saturdays at the Center” where people who live in the community, either with their parents or with other family members, can spend a few hours on a Saturday. We provide educational, recreational, and social opportunities. We also offer other activities such as Knights of Columbus, art classes, pet therapy, and cooking classes. In addition we have a Fight for the Right Community service group, which allows the people we serve to give back to the community. Our main goal is for our adults to become active, contributing, and valued members of the community and to participate in life with dignity and respect.
HOW WE STARTED: Father John Wehrlen started Department for Persons with Disabilities in 1965. As a young parish priest, he wanted to help a mother in his parish who had three young children, one with a developmental disability. In the 1960s there weren’t many services for people with disabilities. A parent’s options were either institutionalization or keeping children at home where they were sheltered, not even allowed to attend public school until 1973.
Father Wehrlen was devastated when this single mother, with no family and little support, took her own life and the lives of her children. From that day he made it his mission to help and provide services to other children with developmental disabilities and their families. He first started a daycare center for children with developmental disabilities as a way to provide children with educational and recreational opportunities and give parents time to rest, work, and complete daily errands. Eventually those kids grew up and needed a fulltime, year-round care, and DPD was started. We opened up our first residential program in 1971. We have the longest running group home in the state of New Jersey, called Murray House. We have grown from a volunteer organization to one of the largest Catholic Charities agencies in the country that provide these services.
A SUCCESS STORY: Walter was one of the first individuals we ever served. He grew up with his mother in Paterson, New Jersey, and became a shoeshine boy on the streets. When Walter’s mother passed away, he had no place to go, but Father Wehrlen was there to offer him a place to live at Murray House. Walter was quite a character. He didn’t say very much, and if you asked him a lot of questions, he would say, “None of your business.” That was one of his favorite phrases. Walter had an important job: checking the mail. He would check the mail five, 10, sometimes 20 times a day, usually not finding anything. When the mail was delivered, he was so happy to bring it back into the house, open it, or to give it to his housemates or the staff.
One hot summer day, Walter went out to check the mail and came back with a very special package in his hands: a newborn infant wrapped in an old army blanket, just a couple of hours old. Apparently someone who couldn’t take care of this baby left her in our mailbox. Perhaps this person knew we were a Catholic Charities organization and would take care of her. When the staff saw the baby, they cleaned her up and called the police, who took the baby away. Walter was angry that they took the baby away, and until the day he died, he said, “The police took my baby” (which was a long phrase for him to utter).
Walter died in the mid 1980s. In 1994 a young woman came to our offices looking for information about her biological parents. The only information she had was a newspaper clipping that said “Baby Found in Mailbox” with our information on it. She came to our office to tell us that she was that baby. She had been adopted into a good home, and was a pre-med student at an Ivy League school. Walter’s baby was going to be a doctor and save lives! Walter is an example of someone who wasn’t given much of a chance in life, yet made a real difference in the lives of others. There are many Walters in our organization!
HOW WE PROVIDE SPIRITUALLY: We have a large volunteer program called “People Need Friends” with more than 100 active volunteers, many of who hold Bible study classes in individual homes. We also have a CARE program (Catholic Adults Religious Education). We meet on the first Monday of the month at the local parish for some kind of service and a lesson.
For example, one of our longtime residents, Vincent, recently passed away, so the volunteers asked the residents to write down their thoughts on a piece of paper. They put the papers into a big bowl, everyone went outside, and the volunteers lit the papers on fire. They all watched the smoke, similar to incense, as their prayers went up to heaven. The lesson usually revolves around the faith or something in the news. After the lesson, they have a little snack and a social time. The meeting is open to people in our program but also people in the community.
HOW TO HELP: We are a nonprofit organization, and we really rely on donations to run our programs. In the state of New Jersey there are more than 8,000 people with development disabilities on a waiting list for services like ours. It is important for us to grow and expand in the future so there can be more community housing opportunities for people with developmental disabilities.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, download the application on DPD.org or contact Sister Joan at (973) 406-1103 or sjoan@dpd.org. To support the Department for Persons with Disabilities, please go to DPD.org orwww.facebook.com/DPDCC?fref=ts"> Facebook.com/dpdcc, or contact Chris Brancato, DPD’s development director, at (973) 406-1104.
Robyn LeeRobyn Lee is Managing Editor of Catholic Digest.In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple of conspiring with publishers to raise eBook prices. Publishers had been chaffing under Amazon’s discount eBook prices, and the DOJ believed that Apple had helped them conspire to switch to a new licensing model using the iBooks store.
Winner: The Department of Justice. Apple was found to have “facilitated a conspiracy” between the major book publishers. A new trial will be held to determine damages, and Apple has vowed to keep fighting the charges.
Next Apple vs. Samsung(WASHINGTON) — U.S. unemployment benefit applications rose 16,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 360,000, although the level remains consistent with steady hiring. The Labor Department said Thursday that the less volatile four-week average increased 6,000 to 351,750.
The weekly applications data can be volatile in early July because some automakers briefly shut down their factories to prepare for new models and many schools close. Those factors can create a temporary spike in layoffs.
The broader trend has been favorable. Applications have declined steadily in the past year, as companies have laid off fewer workers and stepped up hiring. In the past six months, employers have added an average of 202,000 jobs a month. That’s up from an average of 180,000 in the previous six months. Employers added 195,000 jobs in June, and revisions showed that an additional 70,000 jobs were added in the previous two months. The unemployment rate was 7.6 percent, down from 8.2 percent a year earlier.
Applications fell to their lowest level since the recession began in the April-June quarter, according to calculations by Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. They averaged 346,000 a week in the second quarter. That is the lowest quarterly average since it was 338,000 in the final three months of 2007, when the Great Recession began. About 4.5 million people received unemployment benefits in the week ending June 22, the latest data available. That’s about 50,000 fewer than the previous week. It’s also 23 percent lower than a year ago, when there were nearly 5.9 million recipients. Some of those who no longer receive benefits have gotten jobs, but many have simply used up all the benefits available.
More hiring could help the economy grow faster later this year. The economy expanded at an annual rate of just 1.8 percent in the January-March quarter. Most analysts think it slowed even further in the second quarter, to about 1 percent to 1.5 percent. Greater hiring means more Americans are earning paychecks, which boosts income and potentially fuels more spending. Average hourly wages rose 2.2 percent in June compared to a year earlier, ahead of the 1.4 percent inflation rate. Pay gains have started to outpace inflation this year, after barely keeping pace since the recession ended four years ago.
That’s helped push consumer confidence to a 5½-year high. Greater consumer confidence is also helping drive up sales of homes and cars. From January through June, car sales reached their highest total for the first half of the year since 2007. And sales of previously occupied homes topped 5 million in May for the first time in 3 ½ years.
Loyalty programs provide consumers with special discounts, and they give retailers loads of data on shoppers’ habits and preferences. So why are supermarket loyalty membership numbers falling? And why has one major grocery company pulled the plug on its loyalty program?
In the grand scheme of things, customer loyalty programs seem to be rapidly on the rise. According to a study by the research firm Colloquy, the number of U.S. loyalty program memberships grew by 26.7% from 2010 to 2012. Last year, Americans had a collective total of 2.65 billion loyalty program memberships.
But the study reveals that these programs may not be quite as ascendant as they initially appear. “Even though the average number of loyalty programs per U.S. household has grown to 21.9 (up from 18.4 in 2010), only 9.5 of those memberships – less than half –are currently active,” the report states.
What’s more, certain loyalty program categories actually saw a decrease in memberships. In 2012, Americans had 172.4 million supermarket loyalty program memberships, down from 173.7 million in 2010. That’s a decrease of only 1%. But considering that until recently loyalty program totals have generally only gone upward, and that most program categories saw robust growth, any decline in memberships is significant. Combine that with the fact that the percentage of memberships that are active has been falling across the board, and what becomes apparent is that many consumers have grown sick of having to fumble through a pocketbook to find a loyalty card at the grocery store.
(MORE: Back to School Sales Already? Kids Get Ugly Reminder School Isn’t Too Far Off)
It’s not just that the loyalty program cards or key chain fobs are a hassle. “Savvy customers understand that loyalty programs gather and utilize customer data to make marketing decisions,” the Colloquy study reports. “If programs are not crystal-clear in providing benefit to the customer in exchange for that information, and are not clear in their privacy policy, consumers can back off from participating.”
Shoppers aren’t the only ones who are tired of loyalty programs. Over the last few weeks, the supermarket company that runs brands such as Albertsons, Shaw’s, Acme Markets, and Jewel-Osco has been announcing the elimination of all loyalty programs. Shaw’s, for instance, has been pushing the change as “Card Free Savings,” in which “Everybody gets a low price,” regardless of whether the shopper is a loyalty program member or can produce a card to get zapped at the register. “The card isn’t so special anymore,” the grocery company announced via its website. “Everyone has one. So we want to take the special step of not requiring one anymore.”
Many customers view the change as a win-win: no need to keep track of a card (or use a smartphone app) for discounts, and no (or fewer) concerns about privacy and personal data. Other shoppers who have become masters at using loyalty programs to their maximum potential for epic discounts have reason to be upset about the idea of merely getting the same discounts as everyone else.
(MORE: Shred the Punchcards: Belly Updates Customer Loyalty Programs)
What’s in all this for Albertsons and its sister brands? By getting rid of loyalty programs, aren’t these chains also giving up access to all sorts of data about its shoppers? Isn’t that data extremely valuable for marketing and pricing purposes?
Perhaps it’s not as useful as you think, as Chris Wilcox, a spokeswoman for Albertsons LLC, explained to the industry publication Supermarket News:
“We found that tracking individual shopping habits isn’t as critical to our overall strategy as knowing what our customers in our neighborhoods are shopping for. Tracking individual purchases can be one way to do it, but it’s not the only way. Getting to know our customers in neighborhoods, learning each store like it’s our only store, and offering best-in-class customer service is as much of a differentiator.”
At the same time, other supermarket companies are putting an even greater emphasis on loyalty programs—and the potential they give for customized marketing and personalized pricing. As CNBC and the Associated Press have reported, Safeway and Kroger’s, among others, have been stepping up efforts to use customer’s shopping histories to present them with personalized deals and coupons to boost spending. “There’s going to come a point where our shelf pricing is pretty irrelevant because we can be so personalized in what we offer people,” Safeway CEO Steve Burd said earlier this year, according to the AP.
Such a concept may strike some shoppers as being inherently unfair: How would you like paying twice as much for hamburgers or coffee than the person checking out in front of you? Then again, a scenario like that is likely to make you sign up for the loyalty program, which is sorta the point. Many customers will, in fact, love personalized pricing because it’ll make them feel special—like they’re getting a unique deal created just for them.
(MORE: Will Customers Love or Hate Personalized Pricing?)
Regardless, Albertsons and its sister grocers aren’t the only supermarket chains skipping loyalty programs and personalized pricing. Whole Foods and Aldi represent the high and low end of grocers that have done very well without resorting to loyalty programs. But some analysts are skeptical that a business model without loyalty programs or customized pricing and marketing can be successful down the line. “In the future, it will be increasingly difficult for Albertsons to compete against retailers like Safeway that have loyalty programs and are advancing down the road towards personalization,” Jon Hauptman, partner at Willard Bishop, told Supermarket News. “That’s where the puck is headed.”
Brad Tuttle covers business and personal finance for TIME. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and four sons, and also teaches journalism at UMass-Amherst.
Analysts are saying that it will soon cost nearly 10% more to fill up your gas tank. And wouldn’t you know it: The predicted spike in gas prices will coincide with the vacations of millions of Americans.
The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline, which has been hovering around $3.50, is expected to spike by 25¢ to 30¢ over the next few weeks, according to analysts cited by CNN Money and NBC News.
Wholesale prices of oil have surged over the past month, and these increases are inevitably passed along to consumers in the form of steeper prices at the pump. There’s some indication the price hikes have already begun, and it’s anticipated that per-gallon rates will keep rising by 1¢ or 2¢ daily, perhaps more.
“Short-term, we’re going to see the average go into the $3.60, $3.70 range,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at GasBuddy.com. “You’re looking at some markets that were closer to $3 a gallon, like the upper Great Lakes, and they’re going to go back up and be closer to $4.”
(MORE: Beyond the Keystone Pipeline)
According to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report, one year ago at this time, the national average was $3.38 per gallon, 14¢ less than the average as of Thursday of this week. If prices rise in July and August as experts anticipate, it’ll basically be a repeat of 2012, when prices dipped in early summer before soaring from mid-summer on. During one week in early August of last year, the national average rose from $3.53 to $3.66, apparently due to inclement weather and refinery issues.
Let’s at least hope this September doesn’t follow the pattern set last year. Prices at the pump were expected to decline once Labor Day had passed, and yet the opposite happened, with the national average topping $3.80 toward the end of September of last year. The 2012 end-of-summer surge, combined with previous pricing spasms, made it the most expensive year ever for gasoline.
(MORE: Back to School Sales Already? Kids Get Ugly Reminder School Isn’t Too Far Off)
Earlier this year, most analysts forecast that 2013 wouldn’t beat out 2012 for that dubious title. And yet thus far gas prices in 2013 have proven to be exceptionally volatile and unpredictable. So perhaps it’s time to cross your fingers, and hope that the latest prediction — that gas prices will increase sharply now and into August — winds up being wrong.
Brad Tuttle covers business and personal finance for TIME. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and four sons, and also teaches journalism at UMass-Amherst.
This post is in partnership with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A version of the article below was originally published at knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu.
Few toys have caught the imagination of children everywhere more than LEGOs — the multi-colored plastic blocks that can snap together to construct houses, castles, space ships or fantastical imaginary figures. The Danish company (whose name roughly translates to “play well”) traces its roots to a failed carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen, who in 1932 decided to put his skills to work creating toys made of wood. In the late 1940s, Christiansen invested in the then-risky injection molding technology needed to make the plastic blocks. In the late 1950s, Ole Kirk’s son, Godtfred, came up with the interlocking stud-and-tube design that made the company a household name.
But there is a side to the company’s story that is rarely told, one that Wharton practice professor David Robertson says can serve as a guide to both the importance and the perils of innovation in today’s global marketplace. In his new book, Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry, Robertson, who wrote the book with journalist Bill Breen, recounts how a binge of innovation almost bankrupted LEGO — and how the company brought itself back from the brink by returning to its roots.
An excerpt of the edited conversation follows. You can read the entire conversation here.
LEGO went through a decline in the 1990s and the 2000s. There are plenty of stories out there about companies that responded too late to changes that would significantly impact their business or how their customers lived. Is that what happened with LEGO, or was there something different going on?
Robertson: There were two phases in that decline, and one led to the other. The first one was from 1993 to 1998; LEGO went through this stagnant period where really it had reached the end of a natural growth cycle. There are only so many feet of toy space and so many toy stores around the world, and LEGO was on those shelves already….
LEGO tried to keep the growth going by tripling the number of new toys that it offered between 1993 and 1998, but sales didn’t go anywhere. Cost, on the other hand — as you can imagine, if you triple your number of products without changing your sales, your costs go up, your profits go down and LEGO suffered the first loss in company history in 1998. So the company laid off 1,000 people. The grandson of the founder, who has now been leading the company for 20 years, steps aside. He says, “Maybe I’m not the right person to lead this company in the next generation.”
He brings in a turnaround expert, and that guy finishes the layoff. His name is Poul Plougmann, and he realizes that LEGO is actually operating in a very different world than it was just 10 years before. He goes out and he starts looking at the market and finds that kids are getting older [at a] younger [age], that the whole market for toys has changed with companies like Toys R Us and Walmart being much more sophisticated, much more powerful, in terms of their market power. Lastly, a lot of other toys had switched their production to China, and so their toys, the other toys you could buy for your kids [besides LEGOs], were getting cheaper. On the other hand, the Danish kroner had increased in value against the dollar, and LEGOs were still being made in Denmark. So LEGOs were getting more expensive while other toys were getting less expensive, kind of a double hit. The company realized that it really needed to do something different. And that’s when they embarked on this experiment with innovation.
When the company begins its push for innovation, it introduces a lot of what sounds like “can’t miss” products, including collaborations with the creators of Star Wars and the Harry Potter books. There was also some really innovative work going on that involved computerizing LEGO’s trademark blocks and putting them into a virtual world. But the company still finds itself in deep financial trouble — why is that? What was leadership missing when they were embarking on this campaign of innovation? Do you think they could have seen the problems if they had been paying attention to different things?
Robertson: The short answer to that question is that they lost control of the innovation. They tried to innovate in lots of different ways, and they did. They came out with a lot of different toys. Some of those toys were hits like LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Harry Potter and Bionicle. There were a couple of really big hits, and in a way, those were really dangerous for LEGO because [they created] a thick layer of cosmetics that hid a pretty ugly business underneath.
There was a toy called Explore that was a line of toys for toddlers, and they were actually pretty good toys, just from my point of view. But they weren’t very LEGO-y. They didn’t have much construction as part of the toy. LEGO tried to listen to its customers, which you’re supposed to do, and they came out with a line of toys called Jack Stone, which was this minifigure crossed with G.I. Joe, this hero that would save the day. The thing is, these toys were really built for that child who didn’t like LEGO, which was the majority of kids, the company found from one study. These toys would snap together in about 10 minutes and the kids could start playing.
But a lot of us as parents, the reason we buy LEGO for our kids — and we may not admit it to ourselves — it’s that rainy Sunday afternoon when the kids are driving us nuts and we want a couple hours of quiet, so we get the LEGO set. Well, if you bought the Jack Stone set, you would have 10 minutes and then the kids are running around screaming again. So it drove away some of the fans of the brand.
Lastly, one of the experiments that LEGO did during that time was something called Galidor, a huge, expensive failure. It was a buildable action figure, which there was a big market for. What the company tried to do is something that we suggest here still at Wharton: To try and create a full spectrum of innovation, a whole set of complementary innovations that will reinforce each other. Galidor wasn’t just a toy; it had electronics in it that you could play games in. It had an accompanying video game. It had a TV show that would tell kids the story behind the toy. They did all kinds of marketing so there would be Galidor toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals and lots of different innovations that would all build to create this unbeatable offer in the market.
But LEGO kind of got away from what it knew how to do. The TV show, for example, was so bad. And I looked this up on IMDB: Nobody who ever acted in it acted in anything ever again. It destroyed careers. It was just stunningly bad because LEGO drove that show and really didn’t know how to do that.
It took them a while to figure all this stuff out. The problem was that they had these successes from Star Wars and Harry Potter, but those successes were really only successful in years in which there was a movie. So there was a Star Wars movie in 1999 and 2002. There was a Harry Potter movie in 2001 and 2002. There was no movie from either franchise in 2003 or the first half of 2004. Sales of those two toys fall off a cliff, and LEGO is left with one profitable product, Bionicle. Everything else is losing money, and LEGO is a fixed cost business. So if you get above a certain level, then you start making money very fast. If you fall below a certain level, you start losing money very fast. And LEGO started losing money very fast in 2003.
That would be the time that I would think a lot of firms would have completely abandoned an innovation strategy and said, “We don’t have the money; we don’t have the time to innovate. We have to concentrate on survival.” But LEGO didn’t really do that. What did it do, and what do you think the lesson is there for other firms?
Robertson: Well, they really had no choice. They had to innovate. They’re in a market that is a vicious global competition, with fickle customers who have rapidly changing tastes. If you’re in the toy industry, like in many industries, you have to renew your product line every year or two. And so LEGO had no choice but to innovate.
But they cut it way back. What they realized is that these ideas about how you should innovate, all of the things that drove them from 1999 to 2003, had driven them out of control. The “out of the box” thinking almost put them out of business. What they did after 2003 is they kind of went back in the box. They went back to the brick, and they focused more on the police stations and the fire trucks and the other things that not only were what their fans wanted, but were also pretty profitable for them. When they went back in the box, they found that there was a lot of money in the box and that fans returned to the brand.
With the struggles in recent weeks over Obamacare implementation, immigration reform, and the debt ceiling, you would be forgiven for not noticing the fierce battle being fought in the United States Senate over an obscure federal agency called the National Labor Relations Board, which is tasked with enforcing federal labor law and protecting worker’s rights to collectively bargain. The Senate and the President have been locked in a multi-year battle to fully staff the agency with 5 commissioners, and if some sort of deal isn’t reached by late August, the NLRB will be incapable of reaching a quorum, rendering the agency unable to function.
This drama is occurring against a backdrop of a decades-long decline in union participation, with just 11.3% of workers overall belonging to unions. The past few years have been particularly rough for the labor movement, as they have suffered set-backs on the state level, and failed to secure hoped-for labor law reforms during the first two years of the Obama Administration, when Congress was ruled by large Democratic majorities.
That being said, recent polling from both Gallup and Pew reveal that Americans’ support for unions has risen of late, with the Pew poll showing 55% of the population holding a favorable view of unions, the highest level since before the financial crisis. This recent uptick in support for unions can be partially attributed to the slowly improving economy, as it is accompanied by similar increases in favorability for corporations. On the other hand, there are a few trends — namely income-growth stagnation and the fact that corporate owners are taking a larger share of the national income than they have in generations — that would lead one to expect increasing support for unions.
(MORE: The World’s Largest Strike Ends in a Whimper)
Whether you believe that this recent shift in the balance of power from labor towards capital will encourage support for unions, however, depends on what you believe caused their decline in the first place.
For many conservatives, the fall of labor represents a return to the natural economic order. University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Wachter, for example, argues that it was only through extraordinary intervention by the federal government into private business — including price controls and takeovers of entire industries – that unions were able to thrive during the Depression and into the second half of the 20th century. These interventions were justified at the time by the era’s fights against the Depression, fascism (World War II), Communism (the Korean War). But as those threats receded and economic prosperity grew, the case for federal involvement in private enterprise diminished — and the deregulation that followed spurred competition and led to the “natural” death of uncompetitive unionized firms.
The narrative on the left, by contrast, is that the decline in union participation is simply the result of the erosion of federal protection of collective bargaining, driven by Corporate America’s success at evading the labor protections that remain in place. The Center for Economic and Policy Research conducted a comparison of labor policy between Canada and the United States that supports this argument. While Canada and the U.S. are both developed, diverse economies with similar cultural attitudes, Canada had an overall union membership rate of 29.7% as of 2011, nearly three times that of the United States. Canada doesn’t have wartime price controls or the sort of regulation of industry common in America in the 1950s, yet it maintains union membership levels far higher than in the U.S.
According to the CEPR analysis, the key differences between Canadian labor movement and that of the U.S. are relatively slight but profound. In many Canadian provinces, unions are recognized by the government after 50% of a firm’s workers have indicated support for unionization, a process known as “card check.” And in most Canadian jurisdictions, if a union and management can’t come to terms on a contract, they enter an arbitration process in which a settlement is imposed upon the parties by the government. In the U.S., on the other hand, after 50% of a company’s employees decide to unionize, there must be a formal, secret-ballot election before which management has the opportunity to argue against unionization. And U.S. law does not impose an arbitration process on the parties if contract negotiations break down, a dynamic that labor advocates say enables companies to negotiate in bad faith without repercussion.
(MORE: Why is Texas Governor Rick Perry in Illinois?)
Though these analyses differ on the cause of the labor movement decline in America, they both agree that it has to do with political factors rather than broad economic trends like globalization or post-industrialization. But are the political conditions likely to ever align in favor of labor?
CEPR’s analysis suggests that today’s labor movement requires much smaller changes to the law than were necessary at the beginning of the Great Depression. On the other hand, despite their stagnant wages and shrinking share of the nation’s total income, workers today aren’t nearly as desperate as they were during the Depression. Federal programs like unemployment insurance, Social Security, food stamps, and Medicaid, help sustain workers’ standards of living in difficult times. That may explain why the movement was unable to force those changes through Congress during the first two years of the Obama Administration, when economic uncertainty and the Democratic power in Washington were at their height — and provides plenty of reason to doubt that those changes will be enacted anytime soon.
In other words, Americans may not dislike unions as much as they did two years ago, but that doesn’t mean the country is ready jump back in bed with them anytime soon.
Christopher Matthews is a Writer and Reporter for TIME.
(NEW YORK) — Stocks are closing mostly higher on Wall Street as a brief afternoon rally deflated.
Trading was quiet despite the release of minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve’s policy committee.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up a fraction to 1,652 Wednesday, its fifth gain in a row.
The last time the index had five straight gains was early May, before investors started worrying that the Fed was preparing to cut its economic stimulus.
The Dow Jones industrial average gave back eight points to 15,291. The Nasdaq rose 16 points, or 0.5 percent, to 3,520.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.68 percent from 2.64 percent.
More stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was average at 3.5 billion shares.
(NEW YORK) — Call it the Bernanke Boost.
The stock market, which has been marching higher for a week, got extra fuel Thursday after the Federal Reserve chairman said the central bank will keep supporting the economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 surged past all-time highs. Gold rose. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note continued a pullback. Stocks that benefit most from a continuation of ultra-low interest rates, such as homebuilders, notched some of the biggest gains.
Ben Bernanke made the comments in a speech late Wednesday after U.S. markets had closed, saying the economy still needs “a highly accommodative monetary policy for the foreseeable future.”
Bernanke said the U.S. economy needs help because unemployment is high. The remarks seemed to ease investors’ fears that the central bank will pull back on its economic stimulus too quickly.
Stock index futures rose overnight and the market surged at the open Thursday.
“It’s back to the old accommodative Fed, so the markets are happy again,” said Randy Frederick, Managing Director of Active Trading and Derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.
The S&P 500 index jumped as high as 1,671 in early trading, above its record close of 1,669 from May 21. The index was up 17 points, or 1.03 percent, at 1,669 as of 1:02 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
The index is on track for its sixth straight day of gains, its longest streak in four months.
The Dow rose 135 points, or 0.9 percent, to 15,427, above its own all-time closing high of 15,409 set May 28.
The Nasdaq composite rose 47 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3,567. The Nasdaq is at its highest since October 2000. It remains well below the all-time high of 5,048 it reached March 10, 2000.
In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year note fell to 2.60 percent from 2.63 percent Wednesday. The yield has dropped this week. It surged as high as 2.74 percent Friday after the government reported strong hiring in June. Many traders took the report as a signal that the Fed would be more likely to slow its bond purchases sooner rather than later.
The Fed is currently buying $85 billion a month in bonds to keep interest rates low and to encourage spending and hiring.
After Bernanke’s remarks Wednesday, stocks that are helped by low interest rates perked up.
Homebuilders D.R. Horton rose $1.66, or 7.9 percent, to $22.71 and Lennar Group climbed $2.53, or 7.3 percent, to $37.30.
The housing market has benefited from low interest rates because they help make mortgages cheaper.
“The Bernanke qualifications have taken the interest rate risk off the table and now it’s really about what will earnings say,” said Jonathan Lewis, chief investment officer at Samson Capital Advisors.
Corporations began reporting earnings for the second quarter earnings, which ended 11 days ago, this week. S&P Capital IQ forecasts that companies in the S&P 500 will report average earnings growth of 3 percent from a year earlier.
The price of gold rose for a fourth straight day, climbing $35.30, or 2.83 percent, to $1,283 an ounce. Gold has rebounded this week after falling close to a three-year low. Its gains helped mining stocks. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold rose $1.21, or 4.3 percent, to $28.50. Newport Mining gained $1.08, or 4.6 percent, to $27.71.
Among stocks making big moves:
— Bridgepoint Education rose $2.24, or 18 percent, to $14.87, after the for-profit education company said its Ashford University had won accreditation. Bridgepoint, which also operates the University of the Rockies, struggled with accreditation problems for much of 2012.
—Microsoft rose 74 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $35.44, after the company announced a major reorganization. The world’s largest software maker has been struggling with a steady decline in PC demand as people turn to tablets and other mobile devices.
— Rockwell Medical Technologies Inc. jumped 94 cents, or 25 percent, to $4.70, after the drug developer said an experimental treatment for kidney patients took a step toward winning approval.
— Celgene rose $8.20, or 6.6 percent, $133.30 after the Swiss drugmaker said its cancer drug Revlimid met its goals in a late-stage study.
On Saturday, July 13, legions of sneakerheads will descend on Pier 36 in Manhattan for the arrival of Sneaker Con, a kicks convention where admission costs $15 and the average pair of sneakers sells for about $250 — some running as much as 17.5 times their original price.
Sneaker Con visited Miami earlier this summer, moves on to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, and is expected to hit other cities later on. It’s not the only convention playing to the sneaker-crazed masses either.
What’s behind the craze? Nostalgia certainly plays a role. “If you bought Air Jordans when you were 13 or 14, it was probably a big moment in your life,” says Sneaker Con’s Alan Vinogradov. “People remember that feeling, and they want to revisit it. This goes way beyond the great story of Michael Jordan.”
The thrill of the hunt is undeniable as well, as collectors seek rare, unusual and highly prized sneakers to fill out their meticulously organized closets. “If all of these shoes were accessible and easy to get, that would take the fun out of it,” says Vinogradov, who has traveled to Europe, among other places, in pursuit of sneakers.
(MORE: Jay Z and the Mainstreaming of the Album App)
For more of the story, here’s a collection of factoids showing just how passionate some people are about sneakers, and how big sneaker culture has become:
2: Number of shoe stores that some thieves must visit in order to steal a single pair of sneakers — making off with a right-foot shoe on display at one store, and a matching left-foot shoe at another. One Manhattan sneaker store estimates that thieves steal roughly 50 of its display shoes every year.
At least 3: Number of traveling sneaker conventions being hosted this year. In addition to Sneaker Con, there’s Solefest, which is held in Florida and plans to move out of state soon, and Europe’s Sneakerness. Many smaller conventions are held regularly as well.
6: Number of fingers on fake Air Jordan logos found on some counterfeit sneakers, which fraudsters have been known to sell at flea markets and on eBay.
1, 2, at least 11, 20: Numbers, respectively, of people stabbed, toddlers left unattended in cars, shoppers arrested, and customers pepper-sprayed by police in various chaotic scenes in late 2011 when newly released retro Air Jordans arrived at malls around the U.S.
$65: Retail price of the original Air Jordans when they first hit the market in the mid-’80s. A pair of early Jordans in good condition now commands well over $1,000, according to the Air Jordan Price Guide 2013 (yes, there is such a thing).
(MORE: Retro Sneakers Literally All the Rage: Air Jordan XI Concords Cause Fights, Sell for Nearly $1,000)
$200: The original retail price of Nike LeBron X MVP sneakers, which were sold via lottery on a very limited basis in May. These sneakers are expected to be available at Sneaker Con for 17.5 times the original price — $3,500.
1873: The year that the term sneakers (previously known as plimsolls) was coined, according to “Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture,” a special exhibit on display through March 2014 at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Here are a few of the museum’s featured sneakers:
2,500+: Number of pairs of sneakers — almost all of which are Nikes — in the Shoezeum, a private collection that was displayed in Las Vegas in 2012. For $10, visitors could tour the world’s largest private sneaker collection, per Guinness World Records, owned by a guy in his mid-30s from San Diego. His name? Jordan Michael Geller, and he swears it’s a coincidence that it’s similar to a certain iconic basketball star’s.
$3,000: Typical tuition for a student attending a session of the Pensole Footwear Design Academy, run by a former Nike designer in Portland, Ore. (Scholarships are also available.)
10,000 to 15,000: Ballpark estimate for the number of different styles of sneakers for sale at Sneaker Con in New York City. “We turn into the biggest sneaker store on the planet for one day,” says Sneaker Con’s Vinogradov.
$15,000: Value of 50 pairs of sneakers stolen from a storage unit in North Carolina last year.
$90,300: Winning bid for a pair of Kanye West’s Air Yeezy II sneakers when they went up for auction on eBay last summer. The original retail price of the shoes was significantly less ($245).
(MORE: Back-to-School Sales Already: Kids Get Ugly Reminder School Isn’t Too Far Off)
$5 billion: Total online sales of athletic footwear in the U.S. from May 2012 through April 2013, according to the NPD Group, a rise of 21% compared with the same period a year earlier. Better price is one reason e-commerce sneaker sales are increasing far faster than brick-and-mortar sales. Better choice and selection are key as well. “Online also offers the widest assortment of athletic footwear, where brick-and-mortar has limited space,” said the NPD Group’s Marshal Cohen. And it’s the guys who are pickiest about their kicks, according to Cohen. “Surprisingly, men are more superficial about the athletic footwear they buy than women.”
Brad Tuttle covers business and personal finance for TIME. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and four sons, and also teaches journalism at UMass-Amherst.
(WASHINGTON) — Chairman Ben Bernanke says the U.S. economy still needs help from the Federal Reserves’ low interest rate policies.
Bernanke is telling the National Bureau of Economic Research that because unemployment remains high and inflation is below the Fed’s target, the policies are still necessary. He also said the economy is also being held back by higher taxes and federal spending cuts.
Bernanke is answering questions after a speech in Cambridge, Mass. that focused on the Fed’s successes and failures in managing the economy over the past 100 years. Bernanke didn’t signal any changes in the Fed’s bond-buying program during his remarks.
Courtesy of 7-Eleven 
