Nathan Chitty weblog

Chitty family home in Jacksonville, Fl where Dad grew up

Link to three page article about the Chitty House published in the Riverside Avondale Preservation Society newsletter.

Chitty & Co Over-Sea Brand

Read more of the story

The Over-Sea Brand was the Chitty & Co premium brand (Osceola was the regular brand).

At its height Chitty & Co. had sales of $8.5 million from 12 locations. ABC Sr turned down the opportunity to be the exclusive Budweiser distributor because of his Baptist beliefs. He bought out his partners in 1929. In great distress in the depression Governor Martin  gave him a grocery bag with $50,000. He also had offers of financial support from Leon Cheek (Maxwell House Coffee) who brought him gold and Ed Lane (Atlantic Bank) who gave him a line of credit when that was not being done.

This label was acquired from a collection of rare labels who Sandra met on one of her day trips to the country. This trip was to Wildwood in April or May of 2009.

Micanopy Florida Historical Trail, Chitty Store and Home

I was researching our family history in Micanopy Florida and came upon this "Micanopy Historical Trail" 11 mile hike of the area.

My great grandfather's store is stop 6 and his home is stop 11. Great Grand father was Edward Cooper Chitty and he moved to Micanopy in 1877. 

6....Benjamin Building

Located here were Mr. Hickson's drug store, then a millinery shop, the Micanopy Fur Trading Company, a barber shop and pool hall, and the Micanopy post office. It began before 1885 with two stories, was partially destroyed by fire, and rebuilt with today's one story. Edward Cooper Chitty sold general merchandise here.

56....Chitty-Thrasher House

Edward Cooper Chitty built this Victorian style structure as a two-story home in 1900. After he died in 1917, it was acquired by John E. Thrasher so he and his family could be near their store and warehouse. After he died, the second story was removed during the 1920s.

 

Brown Family owned Graceland (Elvis home)

My full name is Nathan Harsh Brown Chitty and my great grand father was William Watkins Brown, Jr. His brother was Battle Manassas, Bull Run Brown. At age 92, a story appeared in the Memphis paper discussing his connection to Graceland, Elvis' home.

Read more here

On July 21, 1861, the first Battle of Mannassas began at Bull Run, Va.

On July 22, a baby boy was born and named "Battle Manassas, Bull Run Brown" because he had two uncles who were officers in the confederate army and involved in the war.

Now, fast forward to July 22, 1953. An Article in the Memphis newspaper, the commercial appeal, carried this story.

Battle M Brown newspaper article and obituary

Battle M. Brown is the oldest member of the Memphis Cotton Exchange, and the last living member of the three charter members of the Southern Baseball League. Mr. Brown is also the oldest member of the Linden Avenue Christian Church and is an Honorary Life Elder. He was associated with one of the oldest and and largest cotton firms of the South, Hill-Fontaine Cotton Company. He spent his birthday quietly yesterday with his wife and family at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Ruth Brown Moore. At the beautiful souther-style home "Graceland".

And now the Story takes a strange twist. Several years before, when another relative named Grace (Toof)  Ward, owned the home, called Graceland, a young artist came and painted a picture of the home, called Graceland. He had also painted a picture of the house of a well know politician in Memphis and was paid fifty dollars for the painting. Mrs. Ward, however, thought this was too much money so she turned him down.

The artist kept the painting and many years later offered it to the employees of Elvis Presley for a wedding present.

Elvis Presley purchased Graceland and the artist though he would appreciate the painting. 

Now fast forward once again to the year 1977. Elvis Presley died that year and when his household goods were auctioned off this painting was sold for fifty thousand dollars.

The aritst was quoted as saying "I'm glad I was not present, I would have had a heart attack."

Strategic Intuition, a profound book

I have read a fantastic book:Strategic Intuition. It is one of the most profound books I have ever read. It answers the question how do you get your strategic idea? That’s the question that Strategic Intuition answers.  This link is to a 5 page recap of the book, it is worth reading many times over         http://bit.ly/nathan-strategic

William Duggan, an associate professor of Management at Columbia Business School, is an expert on what he calls “strategic intuition.” Recently, his class on this subject was rated the highest by the students of Columbia of any of the 218 classes offered. Below is my e-mail interview with Mr. Duggan:

1. Why did you write Strategic Intuition?
   I wrote Strategic Intuition because I stumbled upon the idea and immediately thought it was interesting and important. In strategy, we have lots of techniques for analyzing your industry, your competitors, your own position, customer trends and the like — but none of those methods tells you how to conclude what strategy to adopt. And we have lots of techniques for planning, where you lay out the activities and milestones to accomplish your goal — but none of these methods tells you how to set a goal in the first place. There’s a missing link between strategic analysis and strategic planning: how do you get your strategic idea? That’s the question that strategic intuition answers. I haven’t seen any other answer, and I’ve done a thorough search.
2. In a nutshell, what is strategic intuition?
   Strategic intuition is the selective projection of past elements into the future in a new combination as a course of action that fits your previous goals or sparks new ones, with the personal commitment to follow through and work out the details along the way. It happens as a flash of insight when your mind is relaxed and connects the dots.
3. How does it work?
   Modern neuroscience has overturned the idea of two sides of the brain — creativity on one side, analysis on the other — in favor of “intelligent memory”, where the brain constantly searches for a useful synthesis of a subset of elements from the huge volume it takes in and stores. As it turns out, the first great work of strategy scholarship dates from 1832 — On War by Carl von Clausewitz — and puts the same idea at the center of strategic success. Von Clausewitz gives four steps: 1) examples from history, where you take in elements of what others have done before you to succeed; 2) presence of mind, where you enter the strategic situation with no expectations of what the goal, problem, solution, or strategy should be; 3) “coup d’oeil”, which means “glance” in French, where selective elements from examples from history come together in your mind as a flash of insight; and 4) resolution, which is the determination to carry through the idea you’ve just seen in your mind.

Here is an interesting web site about the book: http://columbiapress.typepad.com/strategic_intuition  

When I went to this web site I saw a link to How Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's theorem by combining the work of other mathematicians in a flash of insight. 

Andrew Wiles lived in our home in Sewanee when he was 19. His parents were friends of my folks. He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Andrew was the subject of a lecture by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker 2012 conference a few years ago. Here is a link to a web log entry I did on the subject.

Stagnation-time for renewed effort

I am so thankful for the TSFL Medifast program. Overall, I have lost 44.5 pounds in 97 days but I have only lost 7 pounds in the last 37 days. My goal is 175 pounds or 9.5 from my present 184.5. I have had too many days in the last 37 of not following the plan faithfully. I am determined to attain the goal and then maintain. This is certainly a challenge.

Cholesterol down again to 125

I donate blood on a regular basis (38 times). Over the last four years my cholesterol is down to 127 from a high of 213. The last two donations were 127 and 135 which is since I went on the Medifast TSFL program. The Blood Bank keeps track of the cholesterol levels and reports them within a week of the donation. They have a nice web site at https://www.fbcdonor.org

Weight loss update now at 42.5 pounds

I am now at day 89 of the TSFL Medifast program. My weight is down 42.5 pounds. My program is now is a stable to gradual decline mode. I still have another 11.5 pounds to lose to get to 175 for a total weight loss of 54 pounds since mid April. 

I feel great and have been able to walk 36 holes of golf most weekends over the past 6 weeks even in the Florida summer heat.

I have been getting a lot of positive feedback from folks I see particularly at Church since we have been members there for 23 years, we have gotten to know a lot of people. I have also gotten a lot positive feedback from my fellow "Trunkslammer" golfers at my club. 

In thinking about the healthcare crisis in this country, if we had a general significant weight loss it would save a great deal of money. The estimate vary widely, I will find some statistics.

Healthcare accounts for 17.6% of GNP according to National Health Expenditure Projection by Health and Human Services:

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/proj2008.pdf

This is an increase from 5.9% in 1965. Amazing. The projected healthcare spending level of GDP by 2018 is 20.3% for a dollar total of $4.4 trillion dollars. Just amazing.

Reading Aloud NYTimes OpEd

I really enjoyed reading this NYTimes OpEd about reading aloud for greater understanding and benefit of the experience. I have for 9 years now subscribed to http://audible.com getting two books a month for download from a large selection. It is really nice to be able to relax and listen to a book being read to you. My device is an IPOD Touch. I recently listened to the New Testiment and read it on my IPOD using the http://www.olivetree.com/ software for the IPOD. It was just great. The audio program was Inspired By...The Bible Experience: New Testament which was the Winner of Audio Publishers Association 2007 Audie Award, Audiobook of the Year

Here is link to the NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/opinion/16sat4.html?em=&pagewanted=print

Weight loss goals

I began the Medifast Take Shape for Life (TSFL) program 32 days ago and have lost 22.5 pounds. My goal is to lose 50 pounds going from 229 on April 18, 2009 to 179. I set up a web page to record the journey at https://sites.google.com/site/nathanweightloss/.

My GPS location published on this blog

This is a really cool application which updates my location based on signals from my Tmobile android "google phone." See setup instructions here: http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge 

I took it one step further and created a http://tinyurl.com/nathanchitty url which give a full page view in an internet browser. When the gps function is turned off, the last location broadcast is shown and the elasped time from when the signal was last broadcast.

In addition, I set up some "draft" emails in my cell phone with the tinyurl which can sent real time if I am traveling to meet someone. It was helpful the other day as I was driving a few hours  for a business meeting.

location is a