Marriott on the Move

When I first started blogging, I told you the story about how I started doing Pilates after my wife told me I was shrinking and needed to do stretching exercises. That was over a year ago. I'm still doing Pilates and it's great. It's wonderful for my flexibility and makes me feel stronger and healthier - and a little bit taller!

I do Pilates at least twice a week when I can because it's such a great health benefit. I decided to have a studio built here at Marriott's headquarters, just outside of Washington, D.C. This way, many of our . . .

I'm a movie buff. Donna and I recently went to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What great fun and wonderful entertainment. As we sat together in the movie, chewing on our popcorn and holding hands, it was great to hear that wonderful soundtrack come back from Indiana Jones of the past.

It was wonderful to see an older performer do gymnastics, jump through the air and go on chases through the jungle. He's a humble guy, this Harrison Ford, but he's taking risks and enjoying . . .

I want to tell you what I learned when I visited our Salt Lake City Downtown Marriott Hotel. You know, I just love to hear stories like this.

Back in March, Pamela Daley took her four year old daughter Sahara to Salt Lake City, Utah, for tests at Primary Children's Hospital. They stayed in our Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown Hotel. To get Sahara excited about the trip, Pamela told her daughter she'd get to see some real snow in Salt Lake City. Since she was from warm, sunny Arizona, Sahara was thrilled she was going to see snow and immediately thought about Santa Claus.

However, when they arrived . . .

Last week, I told you about our Spirit To Serve Our Communities Day. It's held every May and our associates around the world are given time off from work to volunteer in their communities. They participate in activities that range from building homes with Habitat for Humanity to cleaning up local parks and rivers.

Since fighting hunger is so important to me, I have often volunteered at agencies that serve the hungry and receive food from America's Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network, an organization our company has supported since 1992.

Hunger is an important issue to me because our roots go back to 1927 when my . . .

It's birthday time again and I'm back here at my very favorite Marriott hotel, the JW Marriott Camelback Inn. We've had this hotel for over 40 years now and our family continues to come here for spring break every year.

We have a new member of our family coming this year - our newest granddaughter, who was born just a year ago. Last year her father came and brought the two boys and left the mom home to take care of the new baby.

It's always fun to celebrate a birthday with our children and grandchildren. Last year we had a big celebration because we had my mother-in-law's 90th birthday too. She didn't come this year but she's doing great . . .

There's an awful lot of conversation today about the difficulties we're all having to understand what's going on with our economy. None of us really know how long this downturn is going to take or how severe it's going to be. The only thing we're certain of is that we need to all learn to think outside the box. We need to be creative, we need to be innovative, we need to find ways to tackle our problems and really think about what we can do to do better.

I was impressed with a story I heard . . .