The Inner Bottom Line ® ..where Choices & Values meet

DC Pied Piper Redux

June 7th, 2019   •   Comments Off on DC Pied Piper Redux   
DC Pied Piper Redux

Yesterday, a rather unexpected and amazing thing occurred. My office received a call from a gentleman who lives in Albuquerque, NM. He had searched for me online and somehow found the current office number. He wanted to reach out because he had been going through some old papers and found a copy of a column of mine that was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican paper in 2004 with the headline “Understand Boundaries When Dealing with Power.” He said he was stunned how current the piece was in reflecting the state of affairs in this country today and just [ Read More ]

“When Did We Get So Superior?”

April 12th, 2019   •   Comments Off on “When Did We Get So Superior?”   
“When Did We Get So Superior?”

The Inner Bottom Line ® A Syndicated Column on Personal Choices & Ethical Dilemmas by Olive Gallagher  “When Did We Get So Superior?” Once upon a time, America was considered the land of opportunity; a place where gold lined the streets and any person willing to work hard could start with nothing and end up with pie-in-the-sky; whatever one could dream. I wouldn’t be here today if my grandparents or great-grandparents hadn’t been permitted to immigrate to this country, much less allowed to become citizens, and I’ll bet many of you reading this column share a similar heritage. I mean, [ Read More ]

“A Small Elegant Word Redux”

November 10th, 2018   •   Comments Off on “A Small Elegant Word Redux”   

Author’s Note: The fact that I have to still re-publish this column I wrote a number of years ago is heartbreaking and unacceptable. And proof has hard-core resistance to change among too many of us still is. OG   “A Small, Elegant Word” Dignity. A word with few letters. On appearance not very large. But elegant. Succinct. With enormous reach when it’s authentic and honest and organic. Not used often enough in today’s world to describe someone’s character or attitude. And yet, it is a momentous, precious, rare word. Containing deep value. Representing deeper values. Today, in light of all [ Read More ]

Starting Over…Again

January 14th, 2016   •   no comments   

Dear Olive, I started to write out my New Year resolutions right after I read one of your earlier column on just this topic and realized I’ve been making the same ones for years. I always start out feeling real jazzed up, ready to lose ten pounds, go to the gym, make quiet time for myself, even cut my hair. But by March it falls apart. I remember something you wrote about “if you start to see yourself coming in the rear view mirror” but I can’t remember the rest. So I’m asking for help. Why does this always happen? What’s [ Read More ]

Why Good Things Happening to Portland Might Be Bad

October 17th, 2015   •   no comments   

What’s the average cycle for a good thing to turn bad?  Fruit left out to rot takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. But a city? Hard to say. I’ve moved a lot in the past thirty years. I left LA for San Francisco in ’91 to get away from LA’s congestion and out-of-touch values. At that time, the Bay area offered, along a charming, varied, slower-paced life, real estate that was still affordable in some areas and people who had time to savor good conversation, wine and food. But by 2002, after the pace became frenzied and real estate prices, inflated http://is.gd/2rKVZY from the Dot/com bubble with newly-minted millionaires, [ Read More ]

“Don’t Ask Me to Step Outside the Lines”

July 23rd, 2015   •   no comments   

Dear Olive, I work for photography person who’s very successful at providing images for realtors and staging professionals. I love my work and appreciate working for my boss, who treats me with great respect. I’m writing to you, however, because I’m consistently pressed by clients to do “outside” jobs for them, sometimes with offers of “under the table” bonuses.  Not only do these offers make me uncomfortable, but they put me in an impossible position. I don’t understand why some professionals don’t seem to understand how wrong these requests are or how compromised they make me feel. Am I overreacting [ Read More ]

The Safe Haven of a Small, Elegant Word

July 7th, 2015   •   no comments   

Dignity. A word with few letters. On appearance not very large. But elegant. Succinct. With enormous reach when it’s authentic and honest and organic. Not used often enough in today’s world to describe someone’s character or attitude. And yet, it is a momentous, precious, rare word.  Containing deep value. Representing deeper values. Today, in light of all the events, from the most horrific and tragic to the amazing, astounding, “did-that-really-happen” moments of the past week, it’s emerged as the key word, the most accurate, deeply appropriate and somewhat surprising word in the rulings by the highest court in the land http://is.gd/Y5knbY. [ Read More ]

How To Deal With Rude People

July 7th, 2015   •   no comments   

Dear Olive, I’m so glad we had the chance to meet and discuss this issue. As you know, being on the mortgage side of real estate focused on sales and marketing requires me to call on people I don’t know in the hopes I’ll be able to help them see the value of our services. That can often lead to situations where I am confronted by rude people. I also send out a lot of emails and at times I’m asked to remove people from my list. That can be both surprising and hurtful, too. But when these things happy, [ Read More ]

“Trusting the Process and The Outcome”

May 21st, 2015   •   no comments   

The Inner Bottom Line ® A Column on Personal Choices & Ethical Dilemmas by Olive Gallagher Dear Olive, My wife & I have been trying to buy a home for a year. It took us five months to agree on an agent we liked and then, it became a daily grind of looking online, checking out listings our agent sent us, and spending every weekend driving around with her visiting houses that ended up looking nothing like the pictures posted. Finally, last month, we found our dream home. Within 24 hours, we made an offer. Our agent had prepared us [ Read More ]

“But I Thought You Did, Too”

April 20th, 2015   •   no comments   
“But I Thought You Did, Too”

Dear Olive, I was happy to meet you in person. I discovered your column last summer when it ran in The Oregonian and have followed it since on examiner.com but had no idea you were in real estate. That’s why I’m writing. Ted and I have been married for twenty-three years. I always thought our marriage was special and admit, especially when I read one of your columns about infidelity or a couple who couldn’t communicate, thinking, “that isn’t us.” Now I’m not feeling so smug. With the kids gone, we recently decided to sell our large home. That’s when [ Read More ]