by Ryan Markiewicz | May 9, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
It’s pretty interesting—and exciting—that the new Pope is the first American Pope after 275 predecessors. I also read this morning (though not yet confirmed) that his grandparents and great-grandparents were from the Dominican Republic and have French/African Creole roots in New Orleans, making him, in many ways, a reflection of the broader American story and of humankind. Pretty cool.
Even more amazing? He’s a graduate of Villanova University in Pennsylvania—where, as it happens, my former son-in-law teaches.
That Villanova connection brought to mind a story that says a lot about how far we’ve come.
Back in 1931, my Dad—Albert Berlin—was a standout athlete in New York City, recruited by several colleges to play football, including Villanova. Their athletic director at the time was Harry Stuhldreher, one of Notre Dame’s legendary “Four Horsemen.” My Dad had been offered a spot… until the school found out he was Jewish.
I have the original letter, which is still on my wall today. In it, Stuhldreher regretfully withdraws the offer, citing overcrowding and limited scholarships. But in person, he admitted the truth: Jews were not allowed at Villanova back then. The name “Berlin” had slipped through. Once discovered, the decision came down from above: no go.
To his credit, Stuhldreher was ashamed. He helped my Dad get into NYU and stayed in touch with him for years.
Decades later, when I was with Governor Ed Rendell (a Jewish New Yorker and proud Villanova grad) receiving the Pennsylvania Exporter of the Year Award, I showed him that very letter. We both marveled at how the world had changed.
And now, here we are. A new Pope, from America, from Villanova—hopefully another sign of how far we’ve come. From exclusion to inclusion. From shame to progress. From whispered apologies to global milestones.
The arc does bend—if we help it along.
Onward! -JB
by Ryan Markiewicz | May 5, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
I just had breakfast with Brandon Beane at the stadium. Thanks to M&T Bank for the invite, and to our good friend Bill Hanes for the private introduction. I’ve met Beane before—thoughtful guy. Smart. Grounded. You can see why players want to be here.
He talked shop, of course—all the work it takes to build a winning team. (This’ll be Beane’s ninth season, and the Bills have won the AFC East five of his last six. Pretty damn good.)
He looks for guys whose arrows are pointing up—or at least sideways/not down. Bosa’s only 29. They picked up some great D-line talent in the draft. Said the priority this year was getting the defense younger and hungrier. New leadership. Tre’Davious White will help coach up Max Hairston, their first-round pick, and others. On offense, Khalil Shakir is a guy who can go slot or wide—slot first. Josh Palmer can go wide or slot—wide first. Different puzzle pieces. Salary cap always in play (BIG thanks to the Pegulas for putting their money where their team is).
And Josh Allen? Beane’s first draft pick as GM 8 years ago. (Nailed that one!) Still ascending, he believes. Arrow still up. And as good as he is at QB1, Beane said he’s an even better human being. Said he’s been around this league a long time and seen plenty of guys who turn on the “nice and humble” for the cameras—but act like a**holes when they’re off. “Ask anyone in the locker room or anyone working in this building,” he said. “They’ll all tell you: Josh is the real deal.”
Awesome.
But what stuck with me most wasn’t the roster or the draft board. It was the idea of players being there. Brandon talked about team building—not in the corporate “let’s-do-trust-falls” kind of way. Just being present. Showing up. Listening. Learning.
He said, “Sure, you can lift weights anywhere—but working out together and then hanging out afterward? That’s a whole different thing.” I agree. Same with any business. You want your guys to play for each other. That’s what builds success.
Afterwards we got to walk on the field—pretty cool. And it struck me, as it did others who I talked to: it’s bittersweet. I know it’s the second-oldest stadium in the NFL, but there have been incredible memories and moments here—for the team and the fans. And I know for me, for sure. Can’t wait for the new stadium in ’26, but still… sad to see the old place go.
As I drove home, I couldn’t help thinking about the long arc that brought me back to this field—memories of the old stadium, the drives down I-90 a thousand times from Buffalo, first to Jamestown, then to Erie. Starting way back in 1982 when I got the job in Jamestown, driving truck for Oneida Motor Freight. Headed down on Monday mornings, back on to Buffalo on Friday. Sleeping in my old Chevy Suburban at the Rt. 17 rest area four nights a week—just trying to make something happen. Trying to figure out what was going to be the path for our young family.
So yeah, maybe it’s corny—but sometimes, a stadium isn’t just a stadium. It’s a time machine. A mirror. A metaphor.
And who knows? Maybe—just maybe—this coming season–the last one in this well-worn, much-beloved stadium, will be the year the Bills finally get to lift the Lombardi Trophy.
How’s that for an ending?
Friggin’ poetry.
Onward!
Brandon Beane addressing the group inside the stadium suite, with the field as his backdrop. Smart, grounded, and clearly in his element.
Me with Brandon Beane after breakfast. A good man, and a GM who’s built a culture players want to be part of.
The same tunnel the Bills run out of on game day. Walking through it never gets old—this place is full of memories.
The Superman-themed image I gave Beane—one for him, one for Coach McDermott, and one for #17 himself. Because sometimes, Josh really does fly.
by Hannah McCall | Apr 16, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
LP has always prided itself on Hannibal’s old saying: “Find a way or make one”.
Here’s a wonderful example of a businesswoman who did just that.
Enjoy : )
JB
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIfCkRnhCH9/
by Hannah McCall | Apr 15, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
Please see the article below about our good friend and colleague from TFA, Mark Antal.
https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/delta-force-veteran-forced-to-fend-off-brick-wielding-maniac-in-unprovoked-nyc-attack-they-feel-safer-in-kyiv/
Unbelievable.
How does our society allow people like this to repeatedly do what they do to innocent people? Luckily, Mark as a former US Special Ops team leader could protect himself, move that attacker away from his young daughters, and restrain this guy til the police arrived (while wisely holding back from using deadly techniques he knows all too well).
How does the guy have all these arrests and still get released back onto the streets time after time after time? I get compassion for people with mental illness but what if it had been Mark’s daughters, who could not have fended this guy off? What if this happened to you? Or your wife? Or your mother/father kids? TOO MUCH!!!
It’s like my Governor Shapiro said the other day after some nutjob broke into his home and tried to burn down his house with him and his children inside and hoping to “beat him with a hammer”.
He said: “I don’t care which side of the political fence you are on. This is NOT acceptable.”
NYC (and other many communities) need a way more rational, effective and safe-for-its-residents policy than this “catch and release” IMHO.
This feels like Bizarro world.
Make it stop!
JB
by Hannah McCall | Apr 14, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
“Savings” That Never Really Delivered
Back in the day, we were managing truckload freight for a large industrial company. The setup was solid—good rates, consistent service, everything working as it should.
Then along comes one of their internal guys—let’s call him Brent—who wanted to prove he could wring even more “efficiency” out of the operation. Without involving us, he went out and re-bid ten of their biggest lanes on his own. Soon after, he announced with great fanfare that he had found $800,000 in annual savings.
He got a big award. Some kind of internal hero. Made us look kind of bad (why couldn’t LP have done that) but we had to keep our heads down. Didn’t want to get in front of this news cannon.
But nobody looked too closely at the numbers. They just heard the word “savings” and they all nodded approvingly. GOOD NEWS!
Eventually, I asked to see the actual data. Took some persistence, but I got it. And what it showed was that nine of the ten lanes were actually higher—by a combined $200,000 a year. The entire “savings” was based on just one lane, which supposedly saved a million dollars.
Now, you’d think someone of the big execs would stop and ask, “Wait—a million-dollar savings on a single truck lane?” But no one did.
That lane? A short 150-mile “mini” route on paper. But the freight was a huge, oversized part—over-width, requiring flatbeds, special routing, permits, no night driving, no driving in the rain or snow and no weekend runs. Oh—and customs clearance on both sides of a very congested, slow-moving international bridge thrown in for good measure.
The winning bidder came in at half the price of every other quote—$1,000 below the next-lowest. A number that only made sense if you had no idea what the freight actually was. But hey: $1,000 of savings per load x 1,000 loads a year = $1 million in “savings.” Woo hoo, right?
Only problem? Once they realized what they’d signed up for, that company just disappeared. Never moved a single load. Never heard from them again.
But those “savings” stayed on the books. The award stayed on Brent’s shelf. And the myth of the great cost-cutter lived on.
Moral of the story?
It’s easy to find “waste” when you don’t understand the work.
And even easier to declare victory—and then quietly slip away—when no one notices that none of those trucks actually rolled.
by Ryan Markiewicz | Mar 26, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
G7 Business Advisory Council
Yesterday was the latest G7 Ukraine Reconstruction Business Advisory Council (BAC) call. As a reminder, this is business and government leaders from the major industrial nations working to help Ukraine clear the path for reconstruction. Working on:
- Insurance so people can have coverage to invest there
- Port infrastructure so goods can get delivered as needed to help the economy
- Energy to help fix what Russia is knocking out and to plan for the future
- Housing to replace and rebuild the tens of thousands of homes that have been destroyed
- Travel, making it easier for people to visit the country and see for themselves what is happening there, as well as the opportunities to rebuild
We have follow-up meetings in Kyiv and Rome coming up. As I’ve mentioned, this is a very impressive and caring group, headed by Dr. Christian Bruch, Chairman of Siemens in Germany (Christian also lived/worked in Buffalo and Erie years ago). All of them are working hard to help Ukraine continue to resist and survive, keep the lights and heat on during the war, and rebuild afterward. A good, solid group.
While everyone is glad there are peace talks in the works, some concerns were expressed about how these might end up. I told them that I had faith that things will go the right way and a “fair” peace will be achieved. That’s clearly the hope everyone has.
Signal Group Chat Leak
You know I try to stay out of politics with Berlin’s Wall (and will), but the recent Signal incident reminds me of something Prof G/Scott Galloway always says: “It’s not the f-up that gets you, it is your response to the f’up.” I agree.
To me, how much easier/smarter would it have been for the folks in this group to say, “Sorry. Our mistake. Lesson learned. Won’t happen again,” and then just STFU?
Trying to deny this was wrong, or to say it was not classified, makes no sense to me. It’s like getting caught by your Mom with your hands and face covered in chocolate and saying, “It wasn’t me who ate that quart of chocolate ice cream.” I don’t get it.
Everyone makes mistakes. Owning them, learning from them, apologizing for them is pretty acceptable for most people (not all–I know). But since everyone is human, and since humans are imperfect, it seems like it would have been a much smarter way to go (and maybe even Jeffrey Goldberg would not then have come up with the actual types of missiles to use and times of launches for the fighter jets that were on that chain? Maybe he still would have, but maybe not).
There is an old saying, “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.” You think these folks would know that.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Lastly, I’ve been playing around with CHAT GPT since it came out last fall. AI is still an “infant” but will soon become a toddler and then a teen and on and on. Learning very fast and you can already tell that the world will change.
I’m not an IT guy (just the opposite, as the LP IT team will rapidly attest 🤪), but I have “played” with IT from the very beginning. I owned a Kaypro back in the ’70s. The first “portable/luggable” computer ever. (64k was its maximum disk capacity). (I know–what’s a disk? Hahahaha). But I had one.
And when I was driving a truck, I was one of the first to use beepers. And then cell phones and Blackberries (I know, what’s a blackberry?). That is why my cell number is 3333. You could actually choose your own number back then. And now AI.
I liken it to driving a car. I can drive really well, but I can’t fix an engine, can’t change spark plugs (I know–what are spark plugs? 🤪) and usually can’t even figure out how to open the hood. But I can drive a car.
Our good friend and former colleague, Moustafa Elhadary, works for OpenAI, which created CHAPGPT. He told me about a new image creator they’ve come out with. He made this to show me.
Pretty cool, huh?
And then told me to make something, so I made this cartoon out of this picture of my grandson, Ernie. Took less than a minute (and even I could do it! 😉). Pretty cool.
Not sure where all of this will end up taking us.
But, as always…
Onward! -JB
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