Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 593 - "If you judge a book by its cover, you never get to open the book." (Cleopatra)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 12	Issue 593
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"IF YOU JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER, YOU NEVER GET TO OPEN THE BOOK." (CLEOPATRA) John Wooden Video Clip (3 min. 45 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "Considering your Indiana origins, how did you get all the way to UCLA?" Cleopatra (70 BC – 10 BC) was Queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. You may not know: Cleopatra spoke eight languages. She was the only member of Egypt’s royal family who learned to speak Egyptian. She was a master of the arts, rhetoric, and oratory. Cleopatra was a scholar of Homer, natural science, and Greek plays. She was the author of treatises on cosmetics, alchemy, and medicine. When she became ruler in 50 BC the Egyptian coinage had been devalued, the currency was in free fall, the rates of taxation were unsustainable and the exorbitant levies were often extorted by force. By the end of her reign, her country had completely recovered from the economic crisis she inherited. From the moment Cleopatra took office she undertook the challenge of stabilizing the currency, adjusting the rates of taxation, fending off her father’s debtors and defusing tensions with Rome. As a ruler, she brilliantly managed price controls, tax levels, customs duties, food distribution, and all aspects of Egypt’s tightly planned economy. She functioned as a city planner, military strategist, diplomat, linguist and ruler. She ruled Egypt for more than twenty years and fended off the territorial aggressions of the Roman Empire. Rome annexed Egypt almost immediately after her death. Two thousand years after her death, she may still be the most famous woman ruler in history. More than a thousand years passed before another woman ruler came to power. Her intellectual and political genius has often been overlooked. "If you judge a book by its cover, you never get to open the book." Is there a book you are judging by its cover? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 593. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 593. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE The Toy-Strewn Home Give me the house where the toys are strewn, Where the dolls are asleep in the chairs, Where the building blocks and the toy balloon And the soldiers guard the stairs. Let me step in a house where the tiny cart With the horses rules the floor, And rest comes into my weary heart, For I am at home once more. Give me the house with the toys about, With the battered old train of cars, The box of paints and the books left out, And the ship with her broken spars. Let me step in a house at the close of day That is littered with children's toys, And dwell once more in the haunts of play, With the echoes of by-gone noise. Give me the house where the toys are seen, The house where the children romp, And I'll happier be than man has been 'Neath the gilded dome of pomp. Let me see the litter of bright-eyed play Strewn over the parlor floor, And the joys I knew in a far-off day Will gladden my heart once more. Whoever has lived in a toy-strewn home, Though feeble he be and gray, Will yearn, no matter how far he roam, For the glorious disarray Of the little home with its littered floor That was his in the by-gone days; And his heart will throb as it throbbed before, When he rests where a baby plays. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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