Thursday, September 10, 2009

Gina Penzarella: Dressing Others for Success

I came across Gina Penzarella, who lives in the LeHigh Valley that cuts a swathe through northeastern Pennsylvania and northwestern New Jersey. I lived in New Jersey for a year, where I spent a year at Trenton State College in Trenton. I got a chance to travel around the area a bit, and we camped in the mountains above the Lehigh Valley in northern New Jersey.

Gina Penzarella has an entrepreneurial spirit. I saw that right away. She has a boutique dress shop in Easton, PA which right across the Delaware River from New Jersey. She offers personal service and an inventory reminiscent of New York City, from where she comes, for all manner of special occasions, from weddings to proms. One thing I found particularly interesting is that she will only sell one dress per high school, so that no one at a school's prom will be wearing the same style of dress. That in itself I found to be a very unique approach to customer service.


Besides the dresses, Gina Penzarella is also quite the gardener, and I found a blog written by her on the topic. I would wager too that she would get along with both my mother in law and wife, who are both aficionados of preserving plant and animal life.


Amos Tamam: An Immigrant's Success Story

It interests me how people like Amos Tamam can become such successes through hard work, innovation, and diligence. I explained in an earlier post about how he developed a system so that cabbies in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere could accept credit cards rather than cash. Cash has always made cab drivers targets for robbers, and I wonder how many people's lives this simple innovation saved.

Through his innovations that allowed taxi riders to pay through a wireless credit card system, Amos Tamam started Taxitronic Inc. Now, this is not the only innovation involving taxis that he helped develop. He also helped to integrate global positioning systems and other state of the art equipment into taxis to make passengers more comfortable and safer. He is now CEO and president of Verifone Transportation Systems, Inc. and is a leading the way in marketing cutting edge technology for taxi passengers.

His success as an immigrant coming from Israel to New York City reminds me of the rags to riches stories that were written by Horatio Alger in the latter part of the 19th century. Amos Tamam is indeed riding a wave of success.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Harley Swiftdeer Reagan & the Path of Beauty

I keep finding out more about Harley Swiftdeer Reagan that I like. Anyone who has dedicated themselves to a path of spirituality that seeks to "fight against ignorance, slavery, bigotry, racism, war, disease, dogma and superstition to seed future generations with beauty, power, knowledge and freedom" impresses me. But I think I have got a bit ahead of myself.

Harley Swiftdeer Reagan began the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society in 1986, and the society has taken up the mantle to encourage humans to look at the Earth and each other in a different light. Too often in modern society we find that people are so engrossed in their lives that they do not truly live, and in fact too often destroy far more than they create. Living without acknowledging how our actions affect others is not a life worth living, in my humble opinion. Sometimes, our actions can even negatively affect our children and their children.

I believe Harley Swiftdeer Reagan deserves kudos for his efforts to teach a spirituality that will awaken the people of this planet before it is too late. We must respect our world, and all the people in it. There are numerous traditions, including those that come out of the Native North American tribes, that teach people a better way to live.