1. What to do when you’re fired.

“The owner came up to me and said, ‘I’ve been thinking, why should I pay you when I can do what you do?’ And he let me go,’ said Carroll, 51, of Macomb Township. ‘I was driving home, crying my eyes out, to tell you the truth. I thought, ‘What are you going to do? How are you going to make it?’”

One resilient dude with a bullet-proof business philosophy.

“I take care of things. If you take care of one person, it turns into 10. If you do one person bad, it turns into 100.”

2. The Disneyfication of a University. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

“We were given ‘Service Priorities’ table-tent cards, conveniently sized for our pocketbooks and billfolds so we can whip them out whenever we needed to remind ourselves how we change the world. These cards offer a series of declarative statements—pabulum, some might say—about our “care” priorities. Here’s a sample: ‘I support a caring environment by greeting, welcoming, and thanking others.’ To help us care for others, the university has established a ‘positive vibes submission’ website, where we ‘can send a positive vibe to someone.’ It was hard to detect many positive vibes in the workshop itself.”

3. The latest recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in his own words. Will the reward ever recover?

4A. Pay equity for skiers and snowboarders. 4B. The battle against crowded ski hills.

5. Is this what progress looks like? U, G, L, Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly!