Archive for August 2023

My family and I were recently on vacation in San Francisco. During our trip, we attended lectures in the Muir Woods – a forest of redwood trees – and Alcatraz Island. At the end of each lecture, the speaker asked if there were any questions. Of the dozens of people attending each lecture, only two…

A few weeks ago, while visiting friends on Whidbey Island on the west coast, Charlie went fishing in the ocean for the first time. After fishing for about an hour without any luck, we told Charlie that he could cast a couple more times before we needed to leave. On his second to last cast,…

I played golf yesterday morning with an 83-year-old guy named Gus before our school district’s convocation. I’d never met him before, but I caught up to him on the second hole, and he invited me to play with him. He is an amazing person. Engineer-turned-attorney who retired at 62. He lost his wife three years…

Today, I begin my 25th year of teaching. Summer has come to a close, which isn’t easy. As much as I love my job, I admittedly enjoy the long, relatively relaxing summer days more. Yes, I wrote a book this summer and did a great deal of consulting, public speaking, performing, and the like, but…

A few years ago, I was working with formerly incarcerated men who now work in public schools, connected and supporting teenagers in hopes of helping them avoid the same mistakes they made. I was teaching them to tell stories. During our lunch break, one of the men sat down beside me and said, “So where…

More than a decade ago, a reader accused me of being materialistic after I wrote about my lack of a favorite number, specifically criticizing me for saying that when it comes to my salary, my favorite number is the largest number possible. After properly refuting his charges of materialism, I acknowledged that I had plenty…

While on vacation in San Fransisco, I taught Charlie how to play setback. Also known as pitch or high-low-jack. Not surprisingly, he took to the game as quickly as he took to poker and chess. His strategic mind understood the game immediately. He was playing well almost from the start. He wanted to play it…

Kansas resident Lee Wilson planted 80 acres of sunflowers as a 50th-anniversary gift for his wife. A total of 1.2 million sunflowers. He did all of this without his wife’s knowledge, making it a surprise. “What’s a guy get his gal for the 50th?” Wilson said. “And so I put a lot of thought into…

While visiting Alcatraz, we took an audio tour around the prison, narrated by former correctional officers and inmates. At the beginning of the audio tour, it was made explicitly clear that these voices were authentic. Photos of the narrators were also positioned throughout the tour, too. Old, black-and-white images of these men inside the prison,…

I received a text message from my friend, Heather, yesterday. “Have you listened to this yet?” she asked and attached a link to “Perhaps,” the new Guns N’ Roses song. I had not. Heather and I attended a Guns N’ Roses concert about five years at Gillette Stadium. Famously, I had pneumonia that day, but…