Archive for June 2017
Heroes have a way of making you realize how small-minded and ungrateful you have been.
Meet former US Special Forces soldier turned humanitarian aid worker David Eubank, running through ISIS gunfire in the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul in order to rescue a toddler who was sitting amidst a pile of dead bodies. Eubank formed the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) as a Christian humanitarian group in 1997, providing emergency relief…
Read MoreShameful Betsy DeVos can’t say what most human beings can say with ease
Here is the Secretary of Education for the United States of America, the caretaker of our public schools, the protector of our children’s future, and also a person who has never taught in a school, never worked in a public school, and never sent her children to a public school, trying her hardest to avoid…
Read MoreSuck less
I love this sign. We live in a world where the President of the United States opened his very first Cabinet meeting by having each of his Cabinet members praise him as the television cameras rolled. Then he praised himself by declaring himself the post effective President in history with the possibility of Franklin Roosevelt. …
Read MoreNot all sources of inspiration are equal
I’ve often said that you should use whatever you can find as a source of inspiration, but this might be a little much even for me.
Read MoreSleeps like her daddy
My daughter Clara, age 8, is very much like her Daddy. Up before the crack of dawn almost every day. Recently I was telling my students about all the books she has been reading on historical figures, and one of my students asked how she gets so much done. “She’s up at 5:30 every day,”…
Read MoreIf you are reading this, it is very likely that you don’t deserve the fourth cookie
“You owe a debt to the unlucky.” Michael Lewis’s 2012 commencement address is a truly outstanding speech. So often I am told that a speech is great when it is not.A speech is inspiring when it is packed with platitudes.A speech is brilliant when it merely mundane. Michael Lewis’s speech is outstanding. Lewis advises the…
Read MoreThe things I get done while sleepwalking
I’ve reached a new (and perhaps frightening) level of productivity. Last night I went a’sleepwalking. It’s something I did quite a bit as a kid and still do as an adult on occasion. I’ve been known to carry on long conversations with people, brush my teeth, walk off into the woods, gets dressed for work,…
Read MoreWherever you stand on the political spectrum, you have to admire and hopefully agree with everything that James Comey says here during last week’s hearings.
Some people may not believe everything that he said during the hearings (and yet simultaneously and inexplicably claim that his words serve as vindication), but these particular words are spoken by a patriot who loves his country deeply. The sad things is that In terms of actual wordsmithing, I can’t think of anything that Trump…
Read MoreWhy indeed.
Newspapers still exist, and thank goodness they do, not only for their important investigative journalism, but to also give voice to ninja-level truth tellers like Barbara Rank from Hidden Oaks Court in Dubuque. Iowa.
Read MoreHow to Save a Boy
One of my high school classmates passed away this week. Joey Makar was one of those kids who was a friend in elementary school but drifted apart in middle and high school. The kid you walk by in the hallway between classes and think, “We used to collect toads by the stream and race Pinewood…
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