Postcards

Meeting Governor Arnold...and Meg and Carly's political chances

by Patricia Sellers

Sometimes Los Angeles behaves like a small town.

This past Sunday, I ran into Maria Shriver at Room at the Beach, a Malibu store owned by my friend Elizabeth Lamont.

The next morning, coincidentally, I had breakfast with a close friend/colleague of Shriver. And no sooner did I sit down at Le Pain Quotidien than the Governator walked in. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on his way to Sacramento, presumably to MORE

The PR power behind HP's board of directors

While perplexities proliferate around Hewlett-Packard's ouster of CEO Mark Hurd, here is one answerable question in the corporate soap opera: What is APCO Worldwide?

It was PR strategists at APCO who helped the HP board decide how to handle sexual harassment charges against Hurd. Kent Jarrell, an APCO senior vice president who heads the firm's litigation communication practice, presented a mock newspaper article that illustrated the potential damage to HP's reputation MORE

The brain behind the world's grandest cookbook

by Patricia Sellers

You wouldn't expect the world's most ambitious cookbook to come from a fellow who acquired PhDs in mathematical economics and theoretical physics from Princeton, then worked with Stephen Hawking on quantum theories of gravity.

While Nathan Myhrvold has a place in business history as Microsoft's (MSFT) first chief technology officer, his other calling is the culinary kind. "Cooking is a true passion," he says, as if to explain why MORE

Sara Lee CEO Barnes' letter about her stroke

Brenda Barnes, who suffered a stroke in May, is permanently stepping down from her CEO role at Sara Lee (SLE).

Today's announcement resolves part of the deep mystery that has swirled around Barnes' recovery and Sara Lee's future. As for the latter, the board has begun a search for a new CEO -- and reportedly retained Egon Zehnder International to lead it, though the company hasn't confirmed the recruiter's identity. As MORE

Why women don't race to the top

by Patricia Sellers

The New York Times' David Leonhardt socks us with a stark reality in today's column, "A Market Punishing to Mothers." The last three women nominated to the Supreme Court -- Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Harriet Miers --"have all been single and without children," he writes.

Kudos to Leonhardt for making the legal eagles symbols of "gender inequality" -- evidence of the notion that women must sacrifice to succeed. MORE

How to work better: Play!

by Patricia Sellers

Did you play this past weekend?

Serious scientific research suggests that the most intelligent animals are the ones that play the most.

Combine this notion, cited in an article called "State of Play" in The New Yorker recently, with the idea that success -- as I've noted often here on Postcards -- comes increasingly to people who have agile minds and flexible ways of doing things. Play is a necessity MORE