By Credit Union Central of Canada

Published: Monday, May. 14, 2012 – 10:14 am

TORONTO, May 14, 2012 — /CNW/ – As financial institutions established to respond to member needs, Canadian credit unions have a rich history of innovation. Continuing this tradition, Credit Union Central of Canada (Canadian Central), along with representatives from Desjardins Financial Group and the largest Canadian banks, today announced an industry-wide initiative that will pave the way for the development of mobile payment options for Canadians.

On behalf of credit unions, Canadian Central worked with other Canadian financial institutions to create a set of voluntary guidelines called the Mobile Reference Model, which provide a framework for how mobile payment capabilities can work with existing payment systems, ensure fair competition among market participants, and outline how market participants can work with existing, secure contactless payment technology already in place today.

“Credit union members, like all Canadians, are eager to be able to use their mobile devices to make payments and the Mobile Reference Model is the first step toward making this an everyday reality,” explained Oscar van der Meer, Chief Technology payments Officer, Central 1 Credit Union.

Canadian Central, along with expert resources from within the credit union system, has actively participated in this industry initiative on behalf of Canadian credit unions since October, 2011.

“The credit union system’s success has depended on – and will continue to depend on – collaboration, and it is exciting to see the financial services industry working together to enable payments innovation in Canada, ” added David Phillips, president and CEO, Credit Union Central of Canada. “This approach to mobile payment technology represents an opportunity for the credit union system to leverage current implementation plans for contactless payments technology within Canada to deliver a new competitive payments solution to our members.”

To learn more about the Mobile Reference Model, click http://www.cba.ca/contents/files/misc/msc_20120514_mobile_en.pdf

Are you one of those people who worries about leaving money and valuables to your heirs? Does it concern you that they might become jaded and not useful contributing members of society? That your money may get sent down the drain without any appreciation of what money is really to be used for?

We’re all familiar with the adage “You can’t take it with you” and “You can’t control things once you’re gone”. What if there was a reasonable and fairly easy way to do just that?

What values would you consider worthwhile if you could set limits on when and how much you leave to others? Many would consider things like leaving a set amount to help pay off student debt if a certain grade was met. But how about leaving enough to pay for car insurance for ten years if they reach their 30^th birthday with no DUI’s or license suspensions on their record? Or perhaps leaving a stipend if they devote one month per year to volunteering for a particular charity? There are many creative and varied ways to teach morals, principals and ethics which are dear to our hearts to the young.

The common way these days seems to be just leaving heirs something in our Wills and crossing our fingers that it will be saved and/or used in a way that will benefit the recipient and the world at large. Unless your relatives, friends and family are different than most they might all benefit from directing your hard earned assets to what you consider to be good uses. Otherwise, you might just leave the value to a charity or the government to pay down debts.

The Ultimate Gift is both a book and a movie which tells the story of how one man ensured that his grand-nephew would gain some wisdom while ensuring that he would uphold the beliefs of his Great Uncle.

If this idea strikes a chord in you then I will give you a free copy of the movie to watch and to keep if you will meet with me afterward to discuss how you might put such a plan in action for yourself. Don’t delay until it’s too late to change your will. It’s free except for your time.  Send an Email to Sueri@bell.net and put The Ultimate Gift in the subject line and then tell me how I can get the free movie to you – i.e., name address, phone number. I look forward to hearing from you so that you can ensure the future looks better than the past.

By Graham McWaters and Gary Ford

You’ve read about the things that people get caught doing to other people. Sometimes I bet you’ve even chuckled to think that someone could fall for “that” scheme or believed “that” story. But the truth is that as long as there have been humans there have been others who will take advantage of someone who is too trusting or not thinking about the value of what they own.

We are told to beware of getting caught by these scammers and charlatans who try to part us from our money or our valuables and take advantage of our good names. How exactly should we do that?

Here’s a book that gives you step by step instructions on exactly how a scheme works and what you should be doing to protect yourself in the beginning.  Interesting reading all by itself.

If you should be unfortunate enough to get caught anyway by one of these frauds or thefts, there are some written steps to follow in order to ensure that you report it and take the proper steps to prevent the perpetrators from benefiting from their illegal actions.

For one, we should not be trying to do everything by ourselves. Unless and until you have done something a few times and spent time studying how to do that thing, you should not be flying on your own unless you are sure that you can afford to have it redone later by an expert if something goes wrong, go to court to defend your actions, or you really don’t care if you lose the asset which you are working with. An example would be to insist that you can sell your real estate property without a lawyer. If they go to school for many years and then article under an experienced legal expert before being engaged by clients, they probably know more than do from doing some searches on the internet, spending a day reading books on the subject and looking at the pictures. I’d rather pay $600 or $700 to have a sale documented properly and the purchaser/seller checked out for legality, ownership rights and liens than pay that lawyer a few thousand dollars to help me settle a lawsuit later.

Graham McWaters has spent over twenty years in the mortgage and property business. His co-authour, Gary Ford, is an expert and ex-vice-president of Sales & Marketing and Professional Development with First Title, a company dedicated to providing Title Insurance for purchasers and sellers in Canada. Both are Toronto based and experts in their field, as well as being public speakers.

This book covers all types of frauds:  credit and debit card, identity, internet and email, mortgage and title, investment, telephone and seniors as well as many other ways you can be parted from your possessions. Make sure you are taking the right precautions and handling situations in the best possible way.

Generally, I am not a fan of authours and their publishers who print their names in larger type than the title of the book they have written. Having said that, if anyone deserves that honour I suspect it should be Neal Stephenson who writes hugely engrossing stories which are full of incites which stay with you long after you’ve closed the last page of his very thick books.

Stephenson is a mid-westerner who went to Boston for his education. His father is a professor of electrical engineering, his grandfather a physics professor. His mother worked in a biochemistry lab and her father was a biochemistry professor. With this background it was only natural that Neal would specialise in physics. He did, but then switched to geography because he found that would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He seems to have been fascinated by computers from that time on.

This story is another foray into the world of computers. Most people who have spent time around computers have seen many documents entitled Read Me. Having said that, the title is not a misprint. Someone has created a virus which has infected one of the most popular and financially sound computer games in the whole world and is holding people to ransom to release their data back to them.

We meet the owner of the company who runs and owns the game called T’Rain. His family is a typical mid-western bunch who farm and live independently. Their only real quirk is that they love to own and shoot guns of all types at family reunions. That and the fact that they have a couple of seemingly odd branches in the family tree. One of them is Richard Forthrast the owner of the T’Rain company who made it big. Another is his niece Zula who, although raised as a typical American, was originally from the Sudan and had walked many, many miles as a small child to escape war and flee to a refugee camp.

As the story progresses, Richard directs a search for the creator of the virus which is attacking his game and Zula is kidnapped by some members of the Russian Mafia whose data have been stolen from them by the virus. This wide-ranging tale takes us from Seattle, Washington, to British Columbia, Canada, to China and Taiwan, to the Philippines and England. A very well crafted tale.

My only quibble with Stephenson is that he never jumps into the action right away. Although there is certainly plenty of it later on, the first few pages in most of his novels are often devoted to explanations and don’t hold the interest so well. If you can get past that part it’s another great read from a superb writer of intriguing fiction.

If you don’t read another book this year, make sure you read this one!

Do you wonder why some years back California was going bankrupt? Do you wonder why all those European countries are defaulting on loans and scaring the stock-markets all to hell? This is the book which explains it all in simple easy to read language that most of us can follow.

Think this can’t effect Canada where we are supposedly one of the best managed countries in the world? You bet it can and is actually well under way even as we read about what’s going on.

We Canadians have always stood for equality for everyone no matter who you are or where you come from as long as you aren’t harming any other human being. We’re very tolerant of different beliefs and lifestyles with very few limits. But we too have fallen into something which will create different classes of people when they reach retirement. Like the 1700 & 1800′s in England.

From this year forward 10,000 people per day will reach age 65 and be retiring. Well, maybe. On the bottom rung will be those who have been counting on the government to take care of them. Being Canadians we’re not likely to do away with the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
This plan is universal, meaning that everyone who has worked and contributed is entitled to get their share.

Three very significant things will effect that in the future. As more and more people start claiming it there will be less and less available to share – we’ll get our fair share, there’ll just be less income to share.

Second, as more and more people retire there will be less workers contributing money into the plan. Today there are roughly 4.2 workers contributing for every retired person getting the pension. It is estimated that by 2025 there will be only 1.4 workers for every retiree. Think about that for a minute or two.

Thirdly, the funds for this pension are invested in the stock-market which goes up and down as time goes by with no guarantees. As more and more people begin taking money out of the stock-market in order to live in retirement those markets will become stagnant. They can’t grow.

On the next rung of the retirement ladder will be those who have saved RRSPs and other assets on which they will have to depend in order to supplement government pensions in order to maintain a simple style of living. Together the first two rungs of the ladder will be comprised of about 70% of retirees.

Almost all public sector workers have pension plans negotiated by their unions over and above the guaranteed CPP. Guaranteed to maintain 70% of their per-retirement income level and protected against inflation. The other guarantee is that they can retire earlier than most others. Some as young as age 50. Who guarantees this? Our federal, provincial and municipal governments. And where do these governments get their money? Taxpayers!

Today all across Canada virtually all of the defined benefit pension plans are underfunded. How will they get enough to pay those guaranteed amounts? All of the pensioners, and the workers, will need to pay significantly more in taxes in order to cover them.

Read this fascinating book to find out how to help your situation.

This matters so much to your financial future that I will even make you an offer. Go to my website www.SueRicketts.com or my Facebook page – Sue Ricketts Group & Living Benefits. There you will find a free offer form to fill in. I will give you a free copy of this book for you to keep if you will make an appointment to talk about it when you are finished reading. Don’t miss out.

March 15, 2012

 By Dr. Anne-Marie Zadjlik

Malachi 3:10 

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. “Test me on this”, says the Lord, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it.”

Primary Education is free in Lesotho. Primary schools both private and public are abundant and for several hours each day the country side is teaming with kids in their school uniforms walking to or from school. They walk in large groups of similarly aged peers. Each school has different uniforms with different complimentary colors. The effect is quite dazzling. The kids of the Tlhakuli foster home are no different. The school the church has chosen for them provides a better education but it is not the closest. The six foster children of this home are up at dawn, eating a breakfast of pape and fried cabbage and occasionally an egg. They press their uniforms and polish their shoes.

 We woke early to see them off. Surprisingly most of us slept well. The children were rushing from room to room collecting their school supplies. Mahlohonolo walked from her room to the kitchen with a pretty pink purse. In it were her HIV medications taken twice daily under the close supervision of Mme Mamatseliso. She is by far the smallest of the group and since her hospital admission, is visibly winded with exertion.

 Kathy was dismayed to see two of the girls packing their school supplies into a fragile plastic bag. She rushed to the guesthouse, emptied her backpack and filled it with Mahlohonolo’s school supplies. She gently lifted it onto her shoulders and tightened the straps. Two of the boys were walking with their shoes in their hands, polishing them with shoe brushes similar to the ones my father would use as he prepared for work. It didn’t matter much that the shoes were worn through the soles. They would be bright and shiny for school. Our interaction with them that morning slowed them down. School starts at 8 am and they needed an hour to travel there. We admired them as they stood in a row, these orphans of Lesotho. Beautiful, polite, loving and strong. Despite their desperate poverty and vulnerability they exuded strength and hope. Like soldiers ready for battle. And then, they were off. Feet flying down the mountain to the pond and off towards the distant school, we watched as they moved, each of us equally moved by their lives and their will. Mahlohonolo struggled to keep up, lagging behind, her energy still escaping her. 

I studied her HIV medications after she left. She is still on the first line of drugs introduced to Lesotho in 2004, drugs that would never be prescribed for children in North America now that safer and more potent drugs exist. Her last regimen almost killed her and without the immediate introduction of safer and newer drugs for second and third line treatments, her life on this mountain will be short.

And the world looks on in ignorant apathy and with insidious neglect, as millions more like her die an absolutely needless death.

If you have ever wanted to get an idea of what life insurance would cost for you or anyone in your family there is a new place to find Canadian prices and look at costs for different types of policies. The service is free and there is no obligation.

I don’t advocate that you can do it all yourself because it still takes a trained and experienced insurance advisor to point out the differences between one company’s product and another’s. What the difference is between whole life, universal life and term life coverage. Why you would want one product and not another is a discussion to be had with an expert in insurance. However, you need not be at the mercy of any salesperson who comes and says they have the best price. You can decide with confidence what’s right for you.

Leaving that aside, go to http://www.suericketts.com/ and find the tab which says “Instant Life Insurance Quote”.

• Change the Province field to where you live. This does matter and can give you different results from one part of the country to another.
• Use the arrow fields to enter your birthdate. Don’t be alarmed if the quote comes up with an older age than you are. It might be off by one year as many insurance companies use your nearest birthday to calculate your age. If you are 6 months closer to the next one then you will be judged older.
• Make sure that the right gender has the darkened field.
• Ensure that the correct Yes or No is selected beside Smoker/Tobacco. You are a smoker if you use any nicotine or marijuana product. Whether it’s cigars once a month or a joint twice a year – you are a smoker. You’re also a smoker if you are using the Patch or other nicotine substitutes.
• I highly recommend changing the Health Class to Regular even if you think you maintain an extra healthy lifestyle. If the answers to the health questions turn out better than Regular the companies will change the rating.
• Look through the drop-down list for Type of Insurance and see what the results of making different choices may be onprice and value for your money.
• Experiment with Face Amount until you find a result which meets your budget.
• Then click Compare Now

You can make as many quotes as you want to and ensure that you are comfortable with your choice.

Be aware that you may have more or fewer choices come up depending upon your age, the amount of coverage you want and the type of coverage you choose.

When you have found your best choice all that remains is to send me an email by clicking on Request Application. I will then contact you to arrange a time to meet and fill in your application and sign it. At that time I will need to see your driver’s license or another form of government issued picture ID and your social insurance card. All that remains to be done is to give me a cheque made out to the company you have chosen and also a void cheque for company records.

I look forward to providing for your choice when next you need life insurance.

What a wonderful collection of three stories which tell us the story of Yelena, the orphan who needs to escape her torturers and find who she really is and where she came from. The three novels which make us this fast-paced, compelling, magic–romance are the Poison Study, the Magic Study and the Fire Study. All three tales are told from Yelena’s perspective of irony, satire and humour at the conditions she finds herself in.

Poison Study ~ We first meet Yelena in the dungeons beneath the Commander’s headquarters. She has been consigned to die horribly because she killed the son of a very powerful advisor to the Commander. One day she is taken to the office of Valek, the Chief advisor, security officer and spy master of the country of Ixia. There she is given a frightening and impossible choice. If she wishes to live and not face the executioner immediately, she must agree to become the food-taster for the Commander. Yelena, still a teenager, wants very much to have a chance at life and agrees.

Thus she becomes an apprentice to Valek who teaches her all about the many and varied ways which poison can affect and kill a person. The first thing is that Valek makes her drink a poison which he promises will kill her in a very agonizing way over many days unless she receives the antidote every morning. This effectively cuts off her thoughts of escape. Through experience she learns the taste and smell of all the many, many poisons that exist. There are some who seek to find and kill her when her whereabouts becomes known, as the father of the man who’s throat she slit has put a bounty on her head. How she earns the trust of the Commander and the love of the Chief advisor takes a whole book to tell.

She believes that the Commander, whom she respects in most cases, has deliberately killed those people who showed signs of having any magical ability at all and Valek may have had something to do with that. When her own magical abilities are confirmed she must flee.

Magic Study ~ Following her many adventures in Ixia Yelena, now a strong, spirited 20 year old, has learned that she was kidnapped from Sitia by MogKan, a truly evil magician, who had tried to steal her soul in order to augment his own magical abilities. Since her abilities were discovered she has fled Ixia under threat of death and made the decision to go to Sitia to see if she can find her birth family.

In Sitia she is greeted with much suspicion as a possible spy for Ixia, their sworn enemy. Even her brother does not trust her. Fortunately she discovers that she is a member of the Zaltana clan and her parents welcome her back. They are influential in political circles and secure her a place call the Magic Keep where magic is taught and fostered which is a long way from their tree-dwelling homes. It is very lonely and although she manages to make a few friends there are still people following her and threatening to kill her. There is an instant dislike between herself and First Magician Roze Featherstone. She misses Valek greatly and longs for a way to be with him.

Threats to her new homeland come from a small portion of a mysterious, strongly magical clan who live in a desert area of the country. In surviving some of the death threats Yelena begins to find her own magical abilities and discovers that she is a Soul-finder, a very rare gift. Many fear her because of her ability to talk to the spirits of those who have died or who though alive have hidden their souls far from everyday reality in order to escape their fear or the memories of horrible events in their lives. She can find secrets within, which many people want to remain buried forever.

Fire Study ~ Yelena Zaltana, who has become a reluctant diplomat and liaison to Ixia, mostly because of the hostile attacks which have come from First Magician Roze Featherstone and has become very unpopular in the Magic Keep. The last Soul-finder had used his abilities to turn others into mindless slaves to his will and many fear that she will do the same. Yelena is beset by her love for Valek the intelligence officer from Ixia, her duties as liaison and her fear of her own magic. She must use those powers to defeat Roze but does not want to become a criminal who harms others.

These three stories are another masterpiece from Maria V. Snyder who is an engrossing, descriptive and entertaining authour.

Captain James T. Kirk is one of the most famous Captains in the history of Starfleet. There’s a good reason for that. He saved the planet Earth several times, stopped the Doomsday Machine, helped negotiate peace with the Klingon Empire, kept the balance of power between the Federation and the Romulan Empire, and even managed to fight Nazis. On his five-year mission commanding the U.S.S. Enterprise, as well as subsequent commands, James T. Kirk was a quintessential leader, who led his crew into the unknown and continued to succeed time and time again.

(Image via Wikipedia)

1. Never Stop Learning

“You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there’s no such thing as the unknown– only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.”

Kirk’s success was no fluke, either. His style of command demonstrates a keen understanding of leadership and how to maintain a team that succeeds time and time again, regardless of the dangers faced. Here are five of the key leadership lessons that you can take away from Captain Kirk as you pilot your own organization into unknown futures.

Captain Kirk may have a reputation as a suave ladies man, but don’t let that cool exterior fool you. Kirk’s reputation at the Academy was that of a “walking stack of books,” in the words of his former first officer, Gary Mitchell. And a passion for learning helped him through several missions. Perhaps the best demonstration of this is in the episode “Arena,” where Kirk is forced to fight a Gorn Captain in single combat by advanced beings. Using his own knowledge and materials at hand, Kirk is able to build a rudimentary shotgun, which he uses to defeat the Gorn. If you think about it, there’s no need for a 23rd Century Starship Captain to know how to mix and prepare gunpowder if the occasion called for it. After all, Starfleet officers fight with phasers and photon torpedoes. To them, gunpowder is obsolete. But the same drive for knowledge that drove Kirk to the stars also caused him to learn that bit of information, and it paid off several years later. In the same way, no matter what your organization does, it helps to never stop learning. The more knowledge you have, the more creative you can be. The more you’re able to do, the more solutions you have for problems at your disposal. Sure, you might never have to face down a reptilian alien on a desert planet, but you never know what the future holds. Knowledge is your best key to overcoming whatever obstacles are in your way.

2. Have Advisors With Different Worldviews

“One of the advantages of being a captain, Doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.”

Kirk’s closest two advisors are Commander Spock, a Vulcan committed to a philosophy of logic, and Dr. Leonard McCoy, a human driven by compassion and scientific curiosity. Both Spock and McCoy are frequently at odds with each other, recommended different courses of action and bringing very different types of arguments to bear in defence of those points of view. Kirk sometimes goes with one, or the other, or sometimes takes their advice as a springboard to developing an entirely different course of action. However, the very fact that Kirk has advisors who have a different worldview not only from each other, but also from himself, is a clear demonstration of Kirk’s confidence in himself as a leader. Weak leaders surround themselves with yes men who are afraid to argue with them. That fosters an organizational culture that stifles creativity and innovation, and leaves members of the organization afraid to speak up. That can leave the organization unable to solve problems or change course. Historically, this has led to some serious disasters, such as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Organizations that allow for differences of opinion are better at developing innovation, better at solving problems, and better at avoiding group-think. We all need a McCoy and a Spock in our lives and organizations.

3. Be Part Of The Away Team

“Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

Whenever an interesting or challenging mission came up, Kirk was always willing to put himself in harm’s way by joining the Away Team. With his boots on the ground, he was always able to make quick assessments of the situation, leading to superior results. At least, superior for everyone with a name and not wearing a red shirt. Kirk was very much a hands-on leader, leading the vanguard of his crew as they explored interesting and dangerous situations. When you’re in a leadership role, it’s sometimes easy to let yourself get away from leading Away Team missions. After all, with leadership comes perks, right? You get the nice office on the higher floor. You finally get an assistant to help you with day to day activities, and your days are filled with meetings and decisions to be made, And many of these things are absolutely necessary. But it’s sometimes easy to trap yourself in the corner office and forget what life is like on the front lines. When you lose that perspective, it’s that much harder to understand what your team is doing, and the best way to get out of the problem. What’s more, when you’re not involved with your team, it’s easy to lose their trust and have them gripe about how they don’t understand what the job is like.

This is a lesson that was actually imprinted on me in one of my first jobs, making pizzas for a franchise that doesn’t exist anymore. Our general manager spent a lot of time in his office, focused on the paperwork and making sure that we could stay afloat on the razor-thin margins we were running. But one thing he made sure to do, every day, was to come out during peak times and help make pizza. He didn’t have to do that, but he did. The fact that he did so made me like him a lot more. It also meant that I trusted his decisions a lot more. In much the same way, I’m sure, as Kirk’s crew trusted his decisions, because he knew the risks of command personally.

4. Play Poker, Not Chess

“Not chess, Mr. Spock. Poker. Do you know the game?”

In one of my all-time favorite Star Trek episodes, Kirk and his crew face down an unknown vessel from a group calling themselves the “First Federation.” Threats from the vessel escalate until it seems that the destruction of the Enterprise is imminent. Kirk asks Spock for options, who replies that the Enterprise has been playing a game of chess, and now there are no winning moves left. Kirk counters that they shouldn’t play chess – they should play poker. He then bluffs the ship by telling them that the Enterprise has a substance in its hull called “corbomite” which will reflect the energy of any weapon back against an attacker. This begins a series of actions that enables the Enterprise crew to establish peaceful relations with the First Federation.

I love chess as much as the next geek, but chess is often taken too seriously as a metaphor for leadership strategy. For all of its intricacies, chess is a game of defined rules that can be mathematically determined. It’s ultimately a game of boxes and limitations. A far better analogy to strategy is poker, not chess. Life is a game of probabilities, not defined rules. And often understanding your opponents is a much greater advantage than the cards you have in your hand.

It was knowledge of his opponent that allowed Kirk to defeat Khan in Star Trek II by exploiting Khan’s two-dimensional thinking. Bluffs, tells, and bets are all a big part of real-life strategy. Playing that strategy with an eye to the psychology of our competitors, not just the rules and circumstances of the game can often lead to better outcomes than following the rigid lines of chess.

5. Blow up the Enterprise

“‘All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ You could feel the wind at your back in those days. The sounds of the sea beneath you, and even if you take away the wind and the water it’s still the same. The ship is yours. You can feel her. And the stars are still there, Bones.”

One recurring theme in the original Star Trek series is that Kirk’s first love is the Enterprise. That love kept him from succumbing to the mind-controlling spores in “This Side of Paradise,” and it’s hinted that his love for the ship kept him from forming any real relationships or starting a family. Despite that love, though, there came a point in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where Captain Kirk made a decision that must have pained him enormously – in order to defeat the Klingons attacking him and save his crew, James Kirk destroyed the Enterprise. The occasion, in the film, was treated with the solemnity of a funeral, which no doubt matched Kirk’s mood. The film ends with the crew returning to Vulcan on a stolen Klingon vessel, rather than the Enterprise. But they returned victorious.

We are often, in our roles as leaders, driven by a passion. It might be a product or service, it might be a way of doing things. But no matter how much that passion burns within us, the reality is that times change. Different products are created. Different ways of doing things are developed. And there will come times in your life when that passion isn’t viable anymore. A time when it no longer makes sense to pursue your passion. When that happens, no matter how painful it is, you need to blow up the Enterprise. That is, change what isn’t working and embark on a new path, even if that means having to live in a Klingon ship for awhile.

Final Takeaway:

In his many years of service to the Federation, James Kirk embodied several leadership lessons that we can use in our own lives. We need to keep exploring and learning. We need to ensure that we encourage creativity and innovation by listening to the advice of people with vastly different opinions. We need to occasionally get down in the trenches with the members of our teams so we understand their needs and earn their trust and loyalty. We need to understand the psychology of our competitors and also learn to radically change course when circumstances dictate. By following these lessons, we can lead our organizations into places where none have gone before.

Loose Ends is a tale about a third generation Chicago police officer who got shot in the line of duty and when she woke up in hospital realized that she could see and hear ghosts. Somehow this just didn’t fit in with her chosen career path and so she decided to move to a small town called Freeport and start her own private detective practice.

She meets a small caste of good friends who help her out when needed and don’t scoff too much at her “ghost tales”. Rosie Pettigrew is a very young sixtyish lady who always dresses with style and flair. Her buddy Stanley Wagner has the sense of humour of a teenager and a heart of gold.  Mary also meets the good looking  new Police Chief Bradley Alden who shares her passion for running.

The problem with getting told things by ghosts is that in the real world she needs to find proof of what they are telling her.

Mary is hired by a senator’s wife to find out who is haunting their home. During the invewwstigatin she finds that twenty-four years ago a young woman was murdered and her ghost needs  Mary to tell her what happened so long ago. She knows she’s dead but can’t remember who killed her.

Mary must figure out who would do such a thing to a mother-to-be who was part of the campaign team for one of the highest profile Senators in Illinois.

A murder mystery wrapped in a paranormal tale.