Young Brian Scudamore had a series of private chats with a man who took $1,000 and turned it into a personal net worth of $3.5 billion. Simon Sinek told Brian his deepest insights the night he slept on Brian’s sofa. In Brian’s new book, you’ll meet an NBA superstar, a past president of Starbucks, a […]

This lovely factoid was sent to our attention by Aaron and Kelsie Kleinmeyer, perfectly normal Wizard of Ads partners who are not strange or weird or unusual at all. They are perfectly normal people, other than the fact that they are social media magicians of the highest order. They own the world’s only other Free […]

Her walk is like whiskey.  Smoky and strong. Shouldering the sensual hint of embers hot.  Swirling shapes that bend and twirl.  Fascinating the mind and seducing the soul.  A scent that stirs the emotion and ferries the mind to the enchanted circle.  The sniff of cedar and mesquite brings the allure of stars at night.  […]

Prairie Monster: A Tale for My Kids We rolled down the iron rails into a setting sun. Centuries worth of cremated prairie grass and creatures protested our passing in clouds of dust. Our steel dragon trudged along spewing its steam of indifference and shaking the earth to its vast core. Some say the prairie reminds […]

Way back in the 50s, when I was but a wee tadpole, my Paps took me fishing on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River. Don’t recollect what I caught, but vividly remember it was on a big, fat, black lure he called the Arbogast Jitterbug. And ever since I was that crankin’ 5-year-old, there’s never been anything quite […]

Until that night, and oh what a night it was, Genther hadn’t shown much prowess at the plate. First baseman are usually power hitters. Genther was a powder puff. It was a night game in July. The air was still, making the heat even more oppressive and butch wax totally worthless. His folks were there […]

Charlie Brown’s best friend, Linus Van Pelt, clings to his security blanket as he gives his friends wise advice. Dr. Victoria Grady sees this same type of “attachment behavior” stalling the progress of Fortune 500 executives as they try to enter the digital age. Do you have a mental security blanket that is holding you back? […]

Grief struck us, in the deepest dark of night, heralding the news of death.  Like a thunderbolt, it struck without warning, piercing our happy households in an instant – shattering lives. No time to prepare emotions as in an extended illness or an expected loss of an ancient one.  No time for good-byes, no time […]

After reading a book of correspondence between a Zen Master and his followers, I knew I had to meet him. His message was so pure and inviting….and his smile was beaming like a searchlight looking for me.   I found out he would be visiting a Zen center in Chicago and the next day I […]

Faceless portrait photography encapsulates captivating details and striking compositions. 

Wieners and Beans In March of 2000, Evan Chrapko and his brother, Shane, sold their two-year-old internet business for more than half a billion dollars. Internet.  That’s the key word, right? Unless I miss my guess, right now you’re probably thinking, “So two guys made a lot of money on an internet startup. Big deal. […]

Eli Schwartz was head of SurveyMonkey’s SEO team. Shutterstock, WordPress, Blue Nile, Zendesk and countless others came to him for advice. Eli can tell you how to improve your search engine performance without having to master algorithms, keywords, or any of the other traditional approaches. He and roving reporter Rotbart are waiting for you right now at […]

In the scene from Cool Hand Luke, [Below] Luke just found out that his mother died, so the tone of his performance is tender, soulful, sad—completely unlike the obnoxious and irreverent premiere performance in 1962, which was intended as a parody. Singer-songwriters Ed Rush and George Cromarty wrote the song in reaction to a Christian radio station […]

“Nevertheless, in capitalist countries financial success, for those who succeed as for those who do not, is still, if not a truly satisfying adventure, at least a symbol of adventure. Americans are known for the importance they attach to money, the simplicity with which they say what everything they buy costs them, and their tendency […]

What They Didn’t Teach Me at Oxford, I Learned in Jail In his 3,000-year-old book, Ecclesiastes, King Solomon tells us of the stages and phases of his life, his fads and fancies, his regrets and realizations. Then he gives us his final conclusions and advice. Next to the Good News of John, Ecclesiastes is probably […]

Tim Redmond is not a televangelist. But the owners of small businesses from every religion have come to him for more than 35 years to be taught how to dramatically improve the performance of their businesses. Plumbers, electricians, landscapers, remodelers, and other small business owners come to Tim to learn principles found in The Bible. […]

On the day I was born the nurses all gathered ’roundAnd they gazed in wide wonder at the joy they had found.The head nurse spoke up, said, “Leave this one alone.”She could tell right awaythat I was bad to the bone.[Chorus]Bad to the boneBad to the boneb-b-b-b-Badb-b-b-b-Badb-b-b-b-BadBad to the bone– written by George Thorogood

“Lalo” Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. He is best known for his large body of film and TV scores. He is a five-time Grammy Award winner, and has been nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards. Schifrin’s best known compositions include the “Theme from Mission: Impossible,” […]

The Killing  It was a brisk winter day and I witnessed a killing.  A single rifle shot to the head and the victim’s body dropped to the ground, eyes going lifeless as it crumpled.  Six strong men began a repeated and well-rehearsed ritual. Four of them lifted the body, carrying it to an improvised scaffolding. […]

One More Step The wind shreds his words, “We’ll be blown off”. But it’s always just one more step. My hands are cold. On a knife edge of ice, he has the burden of attentiveness. His misstep will pull me off with no warning.  Roped together, if I’m blown off, he leaps down the opposite […]

I don’t care if it rains or freezesLong as I’ve got my plastic JesusSitting on the dashboard of my car.Comes in colors pink and pleasantGlows in the dark cause it’s iridescentTake it with you … when you travel far.  Get yourself a sweet MadonnaDressed in rhinestones sitting on aPedestal of abalone shell.Going ninety I ain’t […]

“ee-MAY-us” From the Good News of Luke, chapter 24, verses 13-35   That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking […]

When to Write it Down, and When Not. If relationships matter to you at all, never put a negative emotion into writing. Spoken words land softly on their feet like a cat that has fallen from a tree. But written words often land with a thud, and the crack of a fractured relationship. My son Jacob […]

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM OWL! AT THE LIBRARY ON TWITTER “Whenever I’m depressed, I remember the penguin in a Penguin Books sweater.” 109-year-old Alfred ‘Alfie’ Date, Australia’s oldest man, has 80 years of knitting experience under his belt, which is why the nurses at his retirement home asked him for a highly specific, peculiar favor. […]

I sit in my chair on a balcony of broken angels overlooking the crooked path leading up to a tower. This place, so familiar to me, looks so different. As if in a dream, my memories lie to me what it used to look like.   That tree wasn’t there. The path never went this […]

She stretches, muscles rippling like currents of the Nile. She’s beautiful and knows it. Her head held high reminds me of the sphinx. She rules this realm with calm assurance, her palace partially draped in shadow. It’s peaceful here, a quiet corner of the jungle protected from the crazy fusion of wacky signs and flashes […]

Extremely very cool postcard from REDBUBBLE

Ken Lindner is in professional development, choreographing the careers of many of the nation’s most successful broadcast personalities, including Lester Holt, Deborah Norville, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Leeza Gibbons, and Matt Lauer. Ken’s approach is simple: Make better choices; experience better results. A Cornell Law School graduate and the author of six books, Ken shares with roving reporter […]

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A married couple with a combined age of 127 rode a tandem bike 3,800 miles from the West coast to the East coast. The 12-week adventure taught the husband and wife a multitude of lessons about teamsmanship, resilience, spontaneity, the goodwill of strangers, the beauty of nature, and the satisfaction of checking items off their bucket […]

postcard of Eilean Donan Castle created in watercolors by Farida Greenfield on Zazzle.

Introduce an unexpected mental image. Stick with the one you chose. Bring it back from time to time. Create a sense of time and place around the person. Never forget that it is the person – not the time or the place or why you were there – that is the focus of your writing. Choose […]

“On September 11, 1660, Samuel Pepys tried a new hot beverage for the first time, recording in his diary: ‘And afterwards I did send for a cup of tee ( a China drink), of which I never had drank before.’ Whether he liked it or not Pepys didn’t say, which is a shame, as it […]

How Many Stars are in our Milky Way Galaxy? According to Jos de Bruijne, a scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA) who works on the galaxy-mapping Gaia mission, the current estimate is between 100 to 400 billion stars. How Many Galaxies are there in the Universe? In 2020, it was estimated that there are around 2 […]

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, […]

“To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in […]

Thirty-five years ago, he patrolled a stretch of beach as long as two football fields on a Caribbean Island whose name I cannot remember. He pushed a wheelbarrow full of ice as he pranced from one end of his empire to the other, the music of his voice rising and falling over the sound of […]

“But hear what? Hear what? The Bible is hundreds upon hundreds of voices all calling at once out of the past and clamoring for our attention like barkers at a fair, like air-raid sirens, like a whole barnyard of cock crows as the first long shafts of dawn fan out across the sky. Some of […]

An Extremely Very Weird Coincidence Three weeks ago Indy Beagle told the Tiny Tribe to “sound off,” so they each told us their names. Indy told me his only goal was to make sure rabbit hole readers knew the names of each of the members of his now-complete Tiny Tribe. I say “now complete” only […]