Hi Reader,

On Friday, I typically share a few leadership ideas, interesting discoveries and questions that caught my attention during the week.

This week we started a conversation about how we can establish rules of the road for individual conduct and behavior in the workplace.

• We kicked it off with Turpentine, Toilet Paper and a Toothbrush — a tale of two trouble-seeking teenage soldiers.
• On Wednesday, I shared Can You Really Write a Clear Code of Conduct? to describe the challenges we face in setting standards for behavior and conduct — and how to make certain everyone is paying attention.

Workin' 9 to 5 – What a Way to Make a Livin'

We lost a powerful force of nature when Dolly Parton passed away this week at the age of 80. You'll find the airways and the Internet replete with tributes and stories about Dolly.

I want to take a moment to make sure you're aware of the Queen of Country's astonishing accomplishments – more stunning as the fourth oldest among 12 children born into poverty in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee:

• The most remarkable to me is that through her Imagination Library, she donated more than 300 million books to children. Think about that. What a truly mind-blowing number!
• Dolly released 50 studio albums, recorded 25 number one singles and wrote over 3,000 songs while selling more than 100 million records worldwide.
• She gave millions to children's health initiatives, including the funding of a pediatric cancer center. As a result, the East Tennessee Children's Hospital announced it would be renamed the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital
• She donated $5,000 per family for those who lost their homes in the Smoky Mountain wildfires in 2016. The total eventually exceeded $12 million.

RIP, Dolly. You've set a high bar that I hope will serve as a powerful inspiration to others. There won't be another one like you! 🙏

I'm finally putting together a grid of books in the Mystery-Thriller-Suspense genre that will give you a toehold for a lot of Fall reading.

In no particular order, here are five I'd recommend to get started. Each of these novels is part of a series, some newer and shorter, but all entertaining.

Pike Logan (Shadow Strike) and Scot Harvath (Choke Point) are two of my favorite characters, each of whom is in a long-running series. If you want to follow a tough operator who takes no prisoners and brooks no interference, these are two guys you'd want in a foxhole with you.

I always recommend starting with book #1 in a series so you can enjoy the development of the character and the people around them.

It Could Have Been My Grandmother

I remember riding with my grandmother — I was plenty nervous, too — with her driving to her church where she was being recognized for teaching Sunday School for 60 consecutive years. Whew!

She was then about 94 years old — still driving an old Plymouth she had before I was born. I couldn’t keep a straight face when I heard her mumble about the car that was just ahead of us:

... when she was driving so slow I thought time would stop.

•••••

The world's first recorded speeding ticket was issued on January 28, 1896, to Walter Arnold in Kent, England, for driving at a speed of 8 miles per hour.

This was four times the legal speed limit of 2 mph at the time. The 1896 event remains widely recognized as the first for a motorized automobile.

My grandmother could have received a ticket driving at that same speed … 75+ years later … but it would be for not speeding enough.

In the San Francisco Bay area, you hear a lot about the America's Cup since the boat and team assembled by Larry Ellison, the local billionaire founder of Oracle, won it twice, in 2010 and 2013.

You are forgiven if such stories suggested this was a new competition for the rich and famous.

Hardly. The first America's Cup was held in 1851 when a U.S. built schooner beat a fleet of British ships racing around England's Isle of Wight.

The ornate silver trophy won by the America was later donated to the New York Yacht Club on the condition that it be forever placed in international competition. Today, the “America’s Cup” is the world’s oldest continually contested sporting trophy.

You may remember, in Your Friday Newsletter for July 24th, that I mentioned Josh Kerr, a Scotsman who broke a 27-year-old record for running the mile.

Last week in the Olympics-like World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, two humanoids set world records when compared to human performance:

• At a 100-meter sprint, a humanoid robot achieved a result of 9.39 seconds, beating the human record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt in 2009.
• In a standing high jump, a humanoid robot was able to reach 2.88 meters, surpassing the human high jump record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993.

You humans got any questions?

Here's a provocative and scary thought:

Albert Einstein warned that a future atomic war could destroy civilization, famously stating,

Instead of telling people when you're unhappy with them — where they should go and how — the insightful and brilliant author, James Lee Burke, offered this suggestion in Robicheaux, one of many novels in his series featuring Dave Robicheaux:

Have you ever accidentally sent an email to the wrong address? This guy did.