“You’ll never amount to anything – you’re all a bunch of dead end kids.” Or so said the mother of a friend many years ago when, during our weekly Friday night high school poker game, we apparently aggravated her. And so began the legacy of… Read More »A Thule And A Hearse
A hot summer night. A darkened car wash. Two members of a local gang, engaged in a drug buy. Two members of the local police force, working in plainclothes as part of an initiative to combat street level crime. Not a good mix. When the… Read More »He Had My Six
The Weminuche Wilderness. 500,000 acres of pristine land in Colorado, roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. I was on top of it, standing 12,688 feet above sea level on Table Mountain, staring slack jawed at a herd of elk in a valley… Read More »‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky
The northern white rhinoceros. Extinct. Or nearly so. The Amur leopard too. And so is the art of listening. There’s an Augustinian phrase, “audi alteram partem,” It means “listen to the other side.” In the current environment, how many people are listening to the other side? I… Read More »A Rhino & A Saint
In 1951, Hemingway penned The Old Man and the Sea. The story’s protagonist, an old fisherman named Santiago, had gone 84 days without catching a fish. Undeterred, he set off in his skiff on a solo journey and hooked an 18-foot marlin weighing an estimated 1,500 pounds.… Read More »Conquering The Marlin
The face of an old woman? Or the face of a young lady? The mind can play tricks, preventing you from seeing what is, or always has been, right in front of you. George Carlin once quipped, “some people see the glass half full. Others… Read More »Seeing the Unseen
Do you want to be an influencer? If the answer is yes, remember this: The content of your speech matters more than the number of words that come out of your mouth. And…less is more. Merriam-Webster defines an “influencer” as “a person who inspires or… Read More »Four. Three. Two.
Do you feel like you’re pushing the same damn huge rock up a hill every single day? (Only to have it roll back to the bottom while you’re not looking… and occasionally it rolls right over you and crushes you?) Well, you’re not alone. In… Read More »Pigs In A Blanket
We all have piles… Piles of bills…Piles of obligations…Piles of yard work…Piles of stress…Piles of homework…Piles of anxiety…Piles of sh**… well you get the idea… In normal times, it’s hard enough to deal with all those piles. But right now…it’s even harder. I had the… Read More »Piles Of You Know What
He died 5 weeks before race day. But I needed him that morning. I needed his encouragement. I needed his care. In the predawn darkness, I listened to my dad’s voice… to the voice message he’d left me just before I’d run the Boston Marathon… Read More »I Hear Voices