Cote Season Quotes

Although I’ve described several avenues to growth, companies can’t pursue them all with the same level of intensity at any given time. It’s important to prioritize. As you start to invest in growth initiatives, take stock of your company and its strengths and weaknesses, identifying your greatest growth opportunities. Perhaps your flow of new products is already great and so is your customer service, but you don’t have much of a business in a particular country you think could be big for you. Start there, and as I’ve suggested, make a targeted effort. Of course, that requires patience. To return to one of my favorite metaphors, you can till the soil and plant seeds, but then you have to water the plants and care for them over a full season and sometimes several seasons as they grow—no shortcuts.

My baby sister, Janet, kept us all occupied with her antics. She could climb out of any enclosure and I actually found her on top of a bookcase one day. I gave her the nickname “Sweet Pea” after the character in the Popeye cartoon strip who possessed similar talents. She was a bundle of nervous energy and liked to tear out her pretty blonde hair in bunches, smiling all the while. I think she enjoyed all the attention from all of her supervisors. Thanksgiving was soon upon us, the time when Grandma would take out all her recipes and spices from a large Oriental tin she kept for the holiday seasons. I especially loved her Swedish Spritz Cookies pressed from a cookie press. Grandma took out the cookie sheets and said, “Carol Ann, you be in charge of the nonpareils. Linda, you can sprinkle the red and green sugar on the cookies after I press them out.” “Where did you get this recipe, Grandma?” “In Sweden, actually. I’ll tell you all about it as we bake. After only a three-year stay in Washington, during which Mr. Bliss was assigned to two different positions: first to the Washington, D.C. Conference on the Limitation of Armaments and then as Chairman of the Diplomatic Service Board of Engineers, President Warren Harding finally made Mr. Bliss, a lifelong Republican, the Ambassador to Sweden.

I liked the faces, too, the same as I'd always seen them; the old wrinkled women, the cautious oxen, the girls with flowers, the roofs of the dove-cotes. It seemed as if only seasons had passed since I saw them last, not years.